Dr. Butch Ware is a historian, public intellectual, and the Green Party candidate for Governor of California. He is an associate professor at UC Santa Barbara, a former Green Party vice presidential nominee, and an advocate for universal healthcare, housing, and divestment from war.

He spoke to Current Affairs Editor-in-Chief Nathan Robinson about his campaign to get on the ballot and what he describes as efforts by the Democratic Party to block third-party candidates.

🍊 Butch Ware's website: https://www.butchware4gov.com/

🍊 Follow Butch on Twitter: https://x.com/butchware?lang=en

🍊 Follow Butch on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/butchware/?hl=en

0:00–11:37 ballot access battle

11:37–17:36 blocking third parties

17:36–23:58 UK Green Party surge

23:58–33:34 Gavin Newsom critique

33:34–37:21 abortion & trans rights

37:21–42:02 Butch Ware’s vision for California

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Jasper Nathaniel is an independent journalist who recently returned from documenting Israeli settler and state violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, where he has spent years reporting on land seizures, settler attacks, military raids, and the daily realities of life under Israeli military rule. 

He spoke to Current Affairs Digital Editor John Ross about what Americans misunderstand about the West Bank, how settler violence actually works on the ground, why settlers have become increasingly emboldened, and how land seizures are often carried out by settlers and then legalized by the state after the fact. Nathaniel also discussed Israel’s military court and prison system, the new death penalty law, the limits of debate inside the Democratic Party, the silence of American politicians when violence occurs, and what Israeli public opinion reveals about where the country may be heading. 

🇵🇸 Subscribe to Infinite Jaz: https://www.infinitejaz.com/ 

🇵🇸 Follow Jasper on Twitter: https://x.com/infinite_jaz 

0:00–6:55 What Americans Don’t Understand About the West Bank 

6:55–14:50 Pogroms in the West Bank 

14:50–19:25 Why Settler Are More Emboldened 

19:25–29:41 Israel's New Death Penalty Law 

29:41–35:52 Who Ends Up in Israeli Prisons 

35:52–42:55 A Litmus Test for Democrats? 

42:55–46:26 The Myth of the Two-State Solution 

46:26–51:53 Why American Politicians Stay Silent 

51:53–57:49 What’s Happening Inside Israeli Society 

57:49–1:01:57 How Bad It Really Is 

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Afshin Matin-Asgari is an Iranian historian and professor of Middle East history at California State University, Los Angeles, and the author of Axis of Empire: A History of Iran–U.S. Relations. He spoke to Current Affairs about the long history of U.S. involvement in Iran—from the 1953 CIA-backed coup to the present conflict—and why foreign intervention has repeatedly strengthened authoritarian forces rather than weakened them. A participant in the 1978 revolution who opposed both the Shah and the Islamic Republic, Matin-Asgari offers a rare perspective on Iranian politics, the nuclear issue, and the current war, arguing that while the Islamic Republic is repressive, Iran’s future must be determined by Iranians themselves, not by the United States or Israel.

🇮🇷 Buy Afshin's Book: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2694-a-history-of-iran-us-relations

0:00-3:05 Afshin's background and how he feels about the war

3:05-5:46 What attacks mean for Iranian dissidents

5:46-9:25 The 1978 revolution

9:25-19:26 The U.S., the 1953 coup, and the Shah

19:26-27:26 Origins of U.S.–Iran conflict

27:26-30:48 Are Iranian leaders irrational?

30:48-35:13 Iran’s nuclear program

35:13-43:02 Iran’s strategy and risk of wider war

43:02-46:48 What stance the left should take

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Donald Trump is trying to starve the island nation into submission, but an international coalition of volunteers is coming to Cuba’s aid. We’re joining them.

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Rania Khalek is a journalist based in Beirut and the host of Dispatches on BreakThrough News.

In this conversation with Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson, she describes life under bombardment in Lebanon as Israel’s assault displaces over a million people and spreads fear across Beirut. Khalek discusses the silence of U.S. Democrats, what Americans are responsible for as their government backs the war, and the broader escalation across the region. She also examines the failures of U.S. media coverage, the dehumanization that enables mass killing, and why Iran’s response must be understood in the context of self-defense and the breakdown of international law.

🇱🇧 Subscribe to  @BreakThroughNews 

🇱🇧 Rania's SubStack: https://substack.com/@raniakhalek?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=58m7xg

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🇱🇧 Rania's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raniakhalek/?hl=en

0:00-14:05 Life under bombardment in Lebanon

14:05-18:45 Democratic silence on Lebanon

18:45-24:10 What Americans should understand about Lebanon

24:10-29:56 Escalation and nuclear fears

29:56-36:19 Media failure and dehumanization

36:19-45:20 Iran, self-defense, and international law

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Becca Rothfeld is a staff writer at The New Yorker, an editor at The Point, and the former nonfiction book critic at The Washington Post, where she wrote until the paper eliminated its books section amid sweeping layoffs.

She explains why book reviews matter and how criticism can introduce readers to ideas they didn’t know interested them. Rothfeld also discusses the role of negative reviews, what it means for a book to be “instructively bad,” and why criticism should challenge rather than flatter its audience. She also argues that the growing use of AI risks degrading human thought, and reflects on beauty, “looksmaxing,” and the kind of intellectual and cultural life worth preserving.

📚 Becca's New Yorker Articles: https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/becca-rothfeld

📚 Becca's Website: https://www.beccarothfeld.com/

📚 Becca's Book: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250849915/allthingsaretoosmall/

0:00–5:41 What Happened to the Washington Post

5:41–13:08 Why Review Books

13:08–22:02 Reviewing “Bad” Books

22:02–39:20 AI and the Death of Thinking

39:20–45:46 Looksmaxing and Beauty

45:46–50:58 Favorite Book Reviews

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Annelle Sheline is a research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a former U.S. State Department official who resigned in protest over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

In this conversation with Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson, she discusses why she chose to resign while other senior officials—including former USAID administrator Samantha Power—remained in their positions. Sheline also examines how U.S. policy and unconditional support for Israel helped lead to the current war with Iran, the devastating human toll of the conflict, and why the erosion of international law could have dangerous consequences for the future of global order.

🌹 Annelle Sheline's New Republic Article: https://newrepublic.com/article/207300/trump-israel-madness-war-iran

🌹 Follow Annelle Sheline: https://x.com/AnnelleSheline

🌹 The Quincy Institute: https://quincyinst.org/

0:00-18:25 Samantha Power's moral bankruptcy

18:25-28:21 How Biden policy led to this

28:21-33:48 Intentionally targeting civilians

33:48-43:41 Why we still need international law

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Trita Parsi is the co-founder and Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and one of the leading analysts of U.S.–Iran relations.

In this conversation with Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson, he explains how the escalating U.S.–Israel war on Iran is affecting civilians, how sanctions and propaganda shaped the political climate leading up to the conflict, and why Israel and the United States may see the war very differently in strategic terms. Parsi also discusses why he believes the war is a mistake for Washington, how Trump ended up launching it, how the conflict might end, and how a very different path might have been possible if diplomacy had prevailed.

🌹 Trita Parsi's latest in Responsible Statecraft: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-war-trump-press/

🌹 Follow Trita Parsi: https://x.com/tparsi

🌹 The Quincy Institute: https://quincyinst.org/

0:00-7:08 The human toll of the war

7:08-9:49 Justifying the unjustifiable

9:49-12:45 What is Israel’s strategy?

12:45-14:51 America will pay the price for Israel

14:51-20:13 Why did Trump get the U.S. into this war?

20:13-23:02 How does this war end?

23:02-24:16 What is Europe doing?

24:16-29:23 How things could have been different

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Trump's fake-anti-imperialism only works because Democrats refuse to embrace the real thing.

🌹 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/remember-when-people-thought-trump-was-anti-war

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Our media’s sanitized coverage obscures the human toll. Are we able to confront the full sickening evil of what the U.S. is doing? 

🌹 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-iran-war-is-unfathomably-depraved 

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According to our elected leaders, we should be very scared of the possibility that Iran could get a nuclear bomb. But Israel already has them, and its government is increasingly unstable and belligerent. 

🔥 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/wait-why-is-israel-allowed-to-have-nukes 

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In their new documentary “Earth’s Greatest Enemy,” Abby Martin and Mike Prysner reveal that the climate and anti-war movements are really one and the same—because the U.S. military is the worst polluter of all.

🌏 Watch Earth's Greatest Enemy: https://earthsgreatestenemy.com/

🌏 Current Affairs Review: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-u.s.-war-machine-is-earths-greatest-enemy

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0:00-7:27 The Film’s Core Thesis

7:27-15:19 The Military As A Destructive Cancer

15:19-18:21 Security Dilemma

18:21-22:34 The Human Cost

22:34-25:34 RIMPAC & Political Evasion

25:34-36:50 Resistance Movements

36:50-42:50 Organizing And Mass Education

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Daniel Bessner is a historian and professor at the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, and the co-host of the foreign policy podcast American Prestige. He’s also the editor of the new Cambridge University Press volume Cold War Liberalism: Power in a Time of Emergency, which examines how liberal elites built the U.S. national security state and justified global dominance during the Cold War.

He joined Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss what the Cold War actually was, why the phrase “Cold War” obscures the mass violence it unleashed across the Global South, and what lessons this history holds for U.S. policy regarding contemporary tensions with China.

☢️ American Prestige Podcast: https://americanprestigepod.com/

☢️ Buy Daniel's Book: https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/history/diplomatic-and-international-history/cold-war-liberalism-power-time-emergency?format=PB

☢️ Follow Daniel on Twitter: https://x.com/dbessner

0:00–19:43 Defining Cold War Liberalism

19:43–23:39 The Myth of a “Cold” War

23:39–28:21 China, Taiwan, and Spheres of Influence

28:21–37:45 JFK and Elite-Driven Liberalism

37:45–42:32 The National Security State’s Legacy

42:32–45:57 Climate

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From slavery and child labor in the 19th century to the Iraq War and Gaza, the Left position has been accepted only after horrible human costs. Next time, how about listening before the damage is done? 

⏳ Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-left-is-always-right-too-early 

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🎭 Subscribe to Philosophy Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ0HX-m_eSY

🎭 Get tickets to BLINK: https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/blink-df19

0:00-3:21 BLINK and Parasocial Intimacy

3:21-7:39 Parasocial Relationships and Boundaries

7:39-11:08 Building Philosophy Tube

11:08-13:51 Aesthetics, Performance, and Ideas

13:51-22:36 Theatre vs. YouTube as Mediums

22:36-30:01 Performance in Politics Without Sacrificing Substance

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1. 🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

The core right-wing principle is a belief in hierarchy, not the limitation of state power. 

🐍 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/07/why-conservatives-hate-the-government-but-love-the-cops 

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For Peter Thiel, JD Vance, and other figures on today’s far right, the works of J.R.R. Tolkien have become a cultural touchstone. Pity they don’t understand the first thing about them.

🧙‍♂️ Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-the-right-abuses-tolkien

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🦩 Read Alex Skopic's Article on Ro Khanna: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/every-argument-against-the-california-billionaire-tax-is-wrong

🦩 Interview Transcript: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ro-khanna

0:00–4:22 Why the Epstein Files Still Aren’t Public

4:22–5:18 Impeaching Attorney General Pam Bondi

5:18–7:05 What’s Inside the Epstein Files

7:05–8:38 Will the Epstein Files Ever Be Fully Released?

8:38–15:39 The Billionaire Tax & an FDR-Style Economic Vision

15:39–21:20 Should Billionaires Exist at All?

21:20–24:25 Gavin Newsom, Ben Shapiro, and Gaza

24:25–29:36 Ro Khanna Explains His Israel Aid Vote

29:36–31:58 Offensive vs. Defensive Weapons to Israel

31:58–35:36 China, Competition, and Rejecting a New Cold War

35:36–37:38 Can Congress Stop Trump’s Wars?

37:38–40:42 Should Trump Face War Crimes Charges?

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🗑️ Read the full article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-sinister-origins-of-americas-anti-litter-movement

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He is the author of Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA, a critical reappraisal of the famously maligned filmmaker that challenges conventional ideas of “bad” art and cultural taste. Sloan joined Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss Ed Wood’s films, queer cinema, and what the politics of taste reveal about Hollywood, capitalism, and outsider art.

🎬 Get the book: https://orbooks.com/catalog/ed-wood/

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🇻🇪 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-coup-in-venezuela-is-an-assault-on-the-whole-world

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The book is a response to Michael Pollan’s 2006 bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and as the title suggests, Sanbonmatsu thinks writers like Pollan are dead wrong about the ethics of food. He maintains that killing and eating animals is entirely indefensible, no matter how “humane” the process supposedly is.

0:00-7:19 The Horror of Meat

7:19-13:02 Comparisons to Slavery

13:02-17:50 The Omnivore's Deception

17:50-20:16 Lab-Grown Meat

20:16-25:15 Evasion of Moral Responsibility

25:15-33:24 Erosion of Moral Decency

33:24-40:33 The Path Forward

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📰 Subscribe to the Ettingermentum Substack: https://www.ettingermentum.news/

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🌸 CODEPINK: https://www.codepink.org/

🌸 Medea's Twitter: https://x.com/medeabenjamin

🌸 Medea's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medea.benjamin

0:00-11:16 Why Disruptive Protest Works

11:16-14:23 Overcoming the Fear of Public Confrontation

14:23-18:36 Making the Human Cost of War Visible

18:36-22:52 The Rise and Limits of Today’s Antiwar Movement

22:52-25:49 The Myth of Trump as an “Anti-War” President

25:49-31:53 NATO’s Role in the Ukraine War

31:53-34:54 Is There a Real Anti-War Right?

34:54-37:56 Why Democrats Lag Public Anti-War Opinion

37:56-40:16 What Keeps People Fighting Back

40:16-47:33 Why Americans Must Confront Their Own Government’s Crimes

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🧿 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/candace-owens-and-the-decay-of-the-american-brain

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📰 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/a-dark-money-network-is-recruiting-u.s.-mayors-to-criminalize-pro-palestine-speech

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🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

🔥 Nina's Twitter: https://x.com/ninaturner

🔥 Nina's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ninaturnerohio/

🔥 Up In Arms Campaign: https://upinarms.life/

0:00–11:33 The Democratic Party's Failures

11:33–14:57 How Harris Squandered Her Campaign

14:57–21:33 Should the Left Primary Hakeem Jeffries?

21:33–28:49 Mamdani’s Affordability Blueprint

28:49–39:33 The Up in Arms Campaign

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🎹 The Needle Drop: https://www.youtube.com/theneedledrop

🎹 Fantano: https://www.youtube.com/@fantano

0:00–7:28 What Right Do Critics Have to Judge Music?

7:28–10:34 AI Music and How It Uses Artists’ Work

10:34–17:13 Why So Much Music in 2025 Feels “Mid”

17:13–23:58 Have Music Critics Become Too Nice?

23:58–32:29 Censorship, Algorithms, and Political Lyrics

32:29–37:13 Paying Artists Fairly and Why They Should Unionize

37:13–40:39 Zohran Mamdani’s Rap Career

40:39–44:53 Underrated Artists Fantano Recommends

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Yet again, the New York Times’ Bret Stephens advocates the overthrow of a sovereign government. Why do the readers of the “paper of record” tolerate this dangerous propaganda?

🌹 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/there-have-to-be-consequences-for-advocating-illegal-wars

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🔥 Adam's Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ghostpanther.bsky.social

0:00-5:35 How the Media Is Whitewashing Cheney

5:35-8:24 All the People Cheney Killed

8:24-14:54 Cheney's Rise to Power

14:54-21:42 How Cheney Gave Us Trump

21:42-29:30 "Box Office Poison"

29:30-32:34 How Dick Cheney Betrayed His Daughter

32:34-45:18 The Real Legacy of Dick Cheney

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💩 Transcript: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/cory-doctorow

💩 Get the book: https://craphound.com/shop/

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PAPERBACK VERSION available in the Current Affairs store: https://shop.currentaffairs.org/collections/books

Current Affairs presents a new “anti-woke” manifesto by Dr. Peter B. Jordanson, a man who refuses to be canceled even when nobody is canceling him, and who dares to angrily speak up for Facts in an age of mushy Feelings. The book is called The Silencing of Me: How Feminism, Wokeness, DEI, Marxism, Transness, and Several Other Things Brought Western Civilization To Its Knees, Ruined My Marriage, and Made Me Late For Work. Today, editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson reads selected excerpts.

Written by Nathan J. Robinson, with additional contributions by Devin Schiff, Stephen Prager, and Michael Lodato.

0:00-17:15 Introduction

17:15-27:24 How Things Used to Be

27:24-36:17 Education as Child Abuse

36:17-40:25 Guns: What Harm Have They Ever Done?

40:25-44:50 The Left’s War on War

44:50-53:00 How I Learned Everything About China

53:00-59:29 A Culture’s Decline

59:29-1:04:39 Everything Is Censored

1:04:39-1:11:20 The "So-Called" Environment

1:11:20-1:17:35 The Eclipse of Traditional Marriage

1:17:35-1:39:04 Why Won’t They Stop Complaining?

✨ Get the book: https://shop.currentaffairs.org/products/the-silencing-of-me

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🌹 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-case-for-centrism-does-not-hold-up

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🌹 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/follow-mamdanis-example

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🍫 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/dubai-chocolate-is-regime-propaganda 

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John Fugelsang is a political commentator and author of Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds. He joins Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss how right-wing Christian nationalism has twisted the teachings of Jesus into a tool of hate and domination.

0:00-6:37 Putting Jesus Back in Christianity

6:37-11:55 Debating the Right

11:55-15:00 John's Religious Background

15:00-18:25 Trump & Erika Kirk on Forgiveness

18:25-22:12 What the Right Really Worships

22:12-34:30 Allie Beth Stuckey & "Toxic Empathy"

34:30-41:35 Why Nonbelievers Should Care

✨ Get the book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Separation-of-Church-and-Hate/John-Fugelsang/9781668066898

✨ John's Twitter: https://x.com/JohnFugelsang

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A neo-Nazi is trying to fill the void left by the failures of the two major parties. Unless Americans are offered a visionary alternative, Fuentes’ toxic ideology may flourish.

🌹 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-rise-of-nick-fuentes-should-horrify-us-all

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David Sirota, founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, joins Current Affairs Editor-in-Chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss his new book Master Plan: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. They trace how corporate America seized control of U.S. politics, from the Powell Memo and Watergate to the rise of the Heritage Foundation, Roger Ailes, and the corporate capture of the courts. 

0:00-13:48 Corruption Is the Water We Swim In 

13:48-24:19 The Powell Memo 

24:19-34:44 It's Part Of The Plan 

32:44-38:02 How Corruption Changes Policy 

38:02-43:16 Obama 

43:16-46:07 Becoming Disillusioned 

46:07-57:25 Undoing the Damage 

🔎 David's Twitter: https://x.com/davidsirota 

🔎 The Lever: https://www.levernews.com/ 

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🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/ 

Nathan J. Robinson, Editor-in-Chief of Current Affairs, speaks with Nika Soon-Shiong, founder and Executive Director of the Fund for Guaranteed Income, and Alanah Odoms, Executive Director of the ACLU of Louisiana. They discuss their collaboration on The Cost of Freedom: Truth and Reconciliation Guaranteed Income Program, a pilot exploring reparations through direct cash payments.

Together, they examine how economic justice underpins civil rights, the historical links between slavery and mass incarceration in Louisiana, and how guaranteed income can reshape policy around public safety and justice.

0:00-5:09 The State of Civil Liberties in Louisiana

5:09-8:11 Connecting Universal Basic Income to Civil Liberties

8:11-13:03 Guaranteed Income as Reparations

13:03-19:34 How Guaranteed Income Changes Lives

19:34-23:53 Responding to Critiques of Basic Income

23:52-30:28 ACLU Louisiana’s Current Battles

30:28-34:52 Impact & Policy Recommendations

34:52-39:26 Drop Site News

⚖️ Read The Cost of Freedom Report: https://www.laaclu.org/app/uploads/2025/06/the_cost_of_freedom_truth_reconciliation_guaranteed_income_program_final_report.pdf

⚖️ Fund for Guaranteed Income: https://f4gi.org/

⚖️ ACLU Louisiana: https://www.laaclu.org/

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Supposedly, the world is divided into good, noble “lions” and evil, grasping “scavengers.” Guess which one Ben thinks he is?

Script by Matt McManus & Nathan J. Robinson

🦁 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ben-shapiros-latest-book-adopts-a-horrifying-creators-vs.-parasites-worldview

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As the FDA finally cracks down on kratom, decades of deregulation have already flooded shelves with questionable supplements and off-brand opioids.

💊 Read Emily Topping's article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-america-got-hooked-on-shady-gas-station-drugs

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Gianmarco Soresi joins Current Affairs Editor-in-Chief Nathan J. Robinson to talk about his acclaimed new special Thief of Joy, the pressures of fame, and why "the court jester was never supposed to have a chair next to the king."

0:00-5:15 The Pressure of Being a Comedian

5:15-7:24 Performing in America Today

7:24-10:47 Israel/Palestine and Taking the Audience’s Temperature

10:47-19:57 The Riyadh Comedy Festival

19:57-23:21 Doing “Edgy” Comedy

23:21-26:32 Can Right-Wing Comedy Ever Be Funny?

26:32-29:37 A Charlie Kirk Joke

29:37-32:34 Comedy’s Impact on Personal Relationships

32:34-42:29 Thief of Joy, Touring, and Crowd Work

🎤 Watch Gianmarco's new special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB9eWtzTOq0&t=3274s

🎤 Follow Gianmarco on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GianmarcoSoresi

🎤 Follow Gianmarco on Twitter: https://x.com/GianmarcoSoresi?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

🎤 Follow Gianmarco on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gianmarcosoresi/?hl=en

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Hasan Piker, one of the most influential political streamers in the world, joins Current Affairs Editor-in-Chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss the failures of the Democratic Party, what they refuse to learn from the success of Zohran Mamdani, and how they are largely responsible for America's ongoing descent into fascism. They also discuss the shifting hasbara surrounding the Gaza genocide, dissect the framing of Hasan’s media profiles, and examine the compromises and contradictions of figures like AOC and Bernie while looking ahead to the future of the socialist left. 

0:00-9:36 What Democrats Refuse to Learn from Zohran 

9:36-18:28 The Shift in Hasbara 

18:28-23:10 Manufacturing Consent 

23:10-29:19 The Left Is Always Right Too Early 

29:19-37:46 Building Power 

37:46-42:52 AOC, Bernie, and Compromise 

42:52-48:47 The Descent Into Fascism 

48:47-52:50 Being a Streamer 

🇵🇸 Follow Hasan on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/hasanabi 

🇵🇸 Follow Hasan on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/hasanabi 

🇵🇸 Follow Hasan on Twitter: https://x.com/hasanthehun?lang=en 

🇵🇸 Follow Hasan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hasandpiker/?hl=en 

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🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/ 

0:00-6:29 Kieran’s Family Story of Resistance

6:29-10:33 Joining the Flotilla

10:33-14:12 What Success Would Mean

14:12-17:53 Powerlessness Is an Illusion

17:53-20:57 The Case for Recognizing Palestine

20:57-22:25 Shifts in U.S. Public Opinion

22:25-28:02 What Comes Next

🇵🇸 Follow Kieran Andrieu: https://x.com/kieran_andrieu?lang=en

🇵🇸 Follow Novara Media: https://www.youtube.com/@NovaraMedia

🇵🇸 Follow Global Sumud Flotilla: https://www.instagram.com/globalsumudflotilla/?hl=en

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0:00-1:39 The Mission Explained

1:39-3:18 Why Launch the Flotilla?

3:18-10:13 Starvation as Israel’s Strategy

10:13-13:51 Facing the Risks

13:51-20:10 Tommy’s Political Transformation

20:10-24:58 Why Zionist Narratives Stick

24:58-31:03 From Victims to Perpetrators

31:03-36:01 The Case Against Working With Zionists

36:21-39:21 How Democrats Betrayed Gaza

39:21-58:50 A Message to the World

🇵🇸 Follow Quentin Quarantino: https://www.instagram.com/quentin.quarantino/?hl=en

🇵🇸 Follow Global Sumud Flotilla: https://www.instagram.com/globalsumudflotilla/?hl=en

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You can be committed to dialogue without pretending the right are reasonable and while aggressively challenging their views. 

🌹 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/as-the-far-right-rises-dont-be-ezra-klein 

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#ezraklein #currentaffairsmagazine #nathanjrobinson

🦚 Selling Out: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-we-stopped-caring-about-selling-out

🦚 Dubai Chocolate: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/dubai-chocolate-is-regime-propaganda

🦚 Republican Podcasts: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-sad-world-of-republican-congressional-podcasts

🦚 Thomas Massie: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/thomas-massies-anti-war-politics-put-democrats-to-shame

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🌹 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-myth-of-the-marxist-university 

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🇨🇳 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/political-elites-just-make-up-new-enemies-whenever-they-need-them

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💀 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/who-will-stand-up-against-the-presidents-lawless-killings

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0:00-10:04 Taylor's Reporting

10:04-13:50 Why is Matters

13:50-18:04 How Good Influence Works

18:04-24:57 Suppression of Gaza

24:57-29:12 The Decline of Journalism

29:12-32:31 How Good Influence Provides Value

32:31-35:11 The Democratic Party's "Messaging Problem"

35:11-40:56 The Response to Taylor's Article

40:56- 44:37 What We Can Learn From This

🔥 Read Taylor's Article: https://www.wired.com/story/dark-money-group-secret-funding-democrat-influencers/

🔥 Read John's Article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/meidastouch-turns-democrats-minds-to-slop

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🐍 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/let-them-eat-memes 

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🤡 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-clowns-arent-funny-anymore

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✊ MPower Change Website: https://www.mpowerchange.org/

✊ MPower Action Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mpoweraction/?hl=en

✊ MPower Action Twitter: https://x.com/MPowerAction

0:00–4:32 Origins of MPower Action and the No Muslim Ban Ever Campaign

4:32–7:37 Gaza Genocide and U.S. Complicity

7:37–10:49 Democratic Party Silence and Support for Israel

10:49–16:47 Progressive Challengers Taking on Pro-War Democrats

16:47–20:45 Islamophobia and Attacks on Muslim Candidates

20:45–24:24 Kamala Harris, the DNC, and Palestinian Exclusion

24:24–29:57 Iran, the JCPOA, and the Push for Diplomacy

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

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☕ Mutual Aid for Jason Woods: https://www.instagram.com/p/DM3UFBvxNq8/

☕ SBWU's Website: https://sbworkersunited.org/

☕ SBWU's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sbworkersunited/

☕ SBWU's Twitter: https://x.com/SBWorkersUnited

0:00-5:24 Why Starbucks Workers Unionized

5:24-11:20 The Reality of Barista Pay

11:20-16:11 Dress Codes as Union-Busting

16:11-20:45 Sip-Ins

20:45-23:50 Organizing in the South vs. North

23:50-28:00 Every Job Requires Skill

28:00-32:01 Steps to Unionize

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Weingarten explains why Mike Pompeo once called her “the most dangerous person in the world,” how right-wing figures like Chris Rufo are manufacturing distrust in public schools, and why education remains a radical force for pluralism, empathy, and democracy. She also addresses the weaponization of anti-Semitism in the context of academic freedom, the destruction of Gaza’s schools (scholasticide), and the role of teachers’ unions as both defenders of democracy and pillars of the labor movement. 

🍎 Buy Randi's Book: https://sites.prh.com/whyfascistsfearteachers 

🍎 Randi's Twitter: https://x.com/rweingarten 

0:00-6:37 “The Most Dangerous Person in the World” 

6:37-11:50 The Truth About “School Choice” 

11:50-26:06 Why Fascists Fear Teachers 

26:06-31:03 How Anti-Semitism is Weaponized to Undermine Academic Freedom 

31:03-34:12 Gaza Scholasticide 

34:12-37:19 Supporting Teachers 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/ 

💰 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-we-stopped-caring-about-selling-out 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

🌹Abdul's Website: https://abdulforsenate.com/

🌹Abdul's Book: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/02/the-definitive-case-for-medicare-for-all

🌹Abdul's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abdulelsayed/?hl=en

🌹 Abdul's Twitter: https://x.com/AbdulElSayed

0:00-5:42 Unpopularity of the Democratic Party

5:42-14:01 Medicare for All

14:01-17:19 Labor

17:19-27:23 Gaza

27:23-31:31 Islamophobia

31:31-40:28 Abdul's Senate Race

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

🔥 Saikat's Website: https://www.saikat.us/en 

🔥 Saikat's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saikatforcongress/ 

🔥 Saikat's Twitter: https://x.com/saikatc 

0:00–5:30 Gaza 

5:30–19:27 The Democratic Party 

19:27–21:41 Nancy Pelosi 

24:00–29:00 Zohran Mamdani 

29:00–36:14 Saikat's Policy Agenda 

36:14–42:27 Campaigning in a Hopeless Moment 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

🩺 Dr. Potter's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrElisabethPotterMD

🩺 Dr. Potter's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drelisabethpotter?lang=en

🩺 Dr. Potter's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drelisabethpotter/

🩺 Dr. Potter's Website: https://www.drpotter.com/

🩺 New York Times article on Dr. Potter: https://archive.ph/vrnN6

0:00-10:00 Insurance Is Out of Control

10:00-14:05 "Peer-to-Peer" Calls

14:05-20:07 The Cruelty of Insurance Companies

20:07-24:14 The Waiver System

24:14-30:42 UnitedHealth's Intimidation Tactics

30:42-37:28 Luigi Mangione + The Need for Reform

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

💀 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/rise-of-the-idiot-interviewer 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/ 

⚙️ Subscribe to UNFTR: https://www.youtube.com/@UNFTR 

⚙️ Read the 5 Non-Negotiables: https://www.unftr.com/5nn 

0:00-8:10 Zohran Mamdani 

8:10-36:57 Can Third Parties Succeed? 

36:57-59:50 The Five “Non-Negotiables" 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/ 

Barry Eisler, a former CIA agent and bestselling novelist, joins Nathan J. Robinson to discuss his new book, The System. They talk about how power actually works in Washington, how politicians get absorbed into the duopoly, why partisan conflict is mostly theater, and how language, fiction, and euphemism shape our understanding of violence, war, and the state. 

🕸️ Purchase The System: https://barryeisler.com/books/the-system/ 

🕸️ Barry's Other Writing: https://barryeisler.com/books/ 

🕸️ Follow Barry on Twitter: https://x.com/barryeisler 

🕸️ Follow Barry on Substack: https://barryeisler.substack.com/ 

0:00–5:33 Introducing *The System* 

5:33–10:41 The Illusion of Partisanship 

10:41–15:14 Understanding the Duopoly 

15:14–27:06 The Co-optation of AOC 

27:06–34:09 Chomky's Martian 

34:09–39:28 How Language Masks Violence 

39:28–45:24 Rationalizing Atrocity 

45:24–56:03 “Are We the Baddies?” 

56:03–1:06:15 The Politics of Thrillers 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

🇵🇸 Follow Mouin on Substack: https://substack.com/@mouinrabbani 

🇵🇸 Follow Mouin on Twitter: https://x.com/MouinRabbani 

0:00-9:55 The Illusion of Negotiations 

9:55-21:54 Weaponization of Aid and the "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation" 

21:54-25:24 Genocide as Eugenics 

25:24-30:15 Undercounting Deaths 

30:15-37:49 Media Censorship of Palestinian Voices 

37:49-41:21 The Collapse of Israeli Hasbara 

41:21-50:33 Genocidal Rhetoric and International Law 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

🏝️ Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-epstein-case-reveals-the-fraud-of-trumpism 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

🏛️ Honor's Substack: https://allancienthistory.substack.com/

🏛️ Honor's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqRIbS3NQ4ksTUrMiaMVQ-Q

🏛️ Interview Transcript: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/what-the-right-doesnt-know-about-rome

0:00-4:28 The Roman Empire TikTok Trend

4:28-12:27 The Roman Empire Loved by MAGA Never Existed

12:27-15:17 What JD Vance Doesn't Understand About Rome

15:17-20:53 Do All Democracies Have to Die?

20:53-32:30 Myth vs. Reality in Roman History

32:30-42:46 Messalina

42:46-49:01 How to Understand Our Own Time

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

Mahbubani joins Current Affairs to explain why the United States is losing ground to China--not because of Chinese aggression, but because of internal dysfunction, elite failure, and strategic incoherence. He critiques the emotional, zero-sum mindset dominating U.S. foreign policy and calls for a more rational, cooperative approach to global affairs.

🌏 Follow Kishore on Twitter: https://x.com/mahbubani_k

🌏 Buy Kishore's Books: https://mahbubani.net/books/

0:00-3:57 The Good News

3:57- 6:54 Why Americans Fear China

6:54-9:51 The Failure of American Elites

9:51-15:31 Why Trump Should Work With China

15:31-21:38 Is China Communist?

21:38-23:37 Is America The Best Model?

23:37-27:14 Does America Think Strategically?

27:14-30:08 America's Wasteful Defense Spending

30:08-35:15 America's Strategic Errors

35:15-41:17 America's Disdain for the UN

41:17-46:17 The Potential For Cooperation

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

🗽 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/zohran-mamdanis-victory-is-just-what-the-left-needed

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

🌎 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/abandon-abundance

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

Nader joins Current Affairs to analyze Donald Trump’s authoritarianism, the Democratic Party’s failure to offer a compelling alternative, and the media’s role in narrowing public imagination. He also responds to Ezra Klein’s recent critique in Abundance, arguing that it shifts blame away from institutional failures and undermines genuine political accountability.

📣 Ralph's latest book, Civic Self Respect: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/718731/civic-self-respect-by-ralph-nader/

📣 Ralph's website: https://nader.org/

📣 Interview transcript: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ralph-nader-on

0:00–5:36 Trump’s Authoritarian Rule

5:36–10:39 What Deserves Our Focus Now

10:39–15:43 Democratic Party Malpractice

15:43–21:19 Ezra Klein’s Attack on Nader

21:19–29:45 How Ordinary People Build Power

29:45–38:39 Proven Victories by Citizen Action

38:39–45:58 Pessimism as a Tool of Control

45:58–52:28 Nader Reflects on His Life's Work

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

She outlines the details of the Quincy Institute’s U.S. peace plan, explains why diplomacy is often smeared as appeasement, and explores what a negotiated end to the war might actually look like. We also explore whether Trump, despite his transactional and erratic instincts, might paradoxically be the only figure capable of restarting peace talks. Nathan concludes with an analysis of the "security dilemma" and how the logic of militarism is driving a global arms race under the guise of self-defense.

🕊️ Read Katrina in The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/authors/katrina-vanden-heuvel/ 

🕊️ Subscribe to The Nation: https://subscriptions.thenation.com/TNA/?f=Site01&s=F5X001 

🕊️ The Quincy Institute's Peace Plan: https://quincyinst.org/research/a-u-s-peace-plan-for-ukraine/#executive-summary

0:00-5:15 Is Trump Interested In Peace?

5:15-17:05 The U.S. Peace Plan for Ukraine

17:21-26:53 Diplomacy vs. Appeasement

26:53-31:21 How Does The War End?

31:21-38:58 The Security Dilemma

🦎 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-brainless-propaganda-of-stephen-miller 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

This interview complements a larger piece by Nathan J. Robinson, editor of Current Affairs, on Cuomo’s deadly mishandling of COVID, corruption scandals, abuse of elderly prisoners, and his pro-corporate, pro-Israel, anti-worker agenda. Despite resigning in disgrace, Cuomo is now the frontrunner in the race for New York City mayor. Boylan’s warning is urgent: his abuses will continue unless we stop him now. 

🗽 Watch Our Other Video on Cuomo: https://youtu.be/gYg-Ihd74pU 

🗽 Read the AG's Investigation of Cuomo: https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.08.03_nyag_-_investigative_report.pdf 

🗽 Read Nathan's Article on Cuomo: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/andrew-cuomo-is-worse-than-you-even-know 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

Nathan J. Robinson, editor of Current Affairs Magazine, reads his article "Andrew Cuomo Is Worse Than You Even Know" 

🗽 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/andrew-cuomo-is-worse-than-you-even-know 

0:00–4:37 The Story of Mr. Smalls 

4:37–13:23 Abuse of Power & Workplace Misconduct 

13:23–21:09 Deadly COVID Mismanagement 

21:09–25:18 Corruption & Cover-Ups 

25:18–39:35 Cuomo’s Political Record & Ideology 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

Professor Richard Wolff is the host of the weekly program Economic Update, co-founder of Democracy at Work, and the author of numerous books including Understanding Marxism, Understanding Socialism, Capitalism Hits the Fan, and The Sickness Is the System.

He joins Current Affairs to explain how economics is deliberately taught in a way that confuses people and obscures the realities of power and exploitation. He dismantles the myth that capitalism delivers prosperity, showing instead how it generates instability, inequality, and crisis. Wolff also offers a sober analysis of America’s imperial decline, critiques Trump’s economic agenda, and exposes the economic lies behind anti-immigrant rhetoric.

📚 Subscribe to Richard's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@democracyatwrk/videos

📚 Buy Richard's Books: https://www.rdwolff.com/books

0:00–11:53 Why Economics Is Designed to Confuse You

11:53–22:26 What Marxism Actually Reveals About Capitalism

22:26–30:55 Capitalism Isn’t What You Think It Is

30:55–36:48 Capitalism’s “Success” Story Is a Lie

36:48–44:35 The End of American Empire

44:35–47:45 Will Trump Cause A Recession?

47:45–57:23 The Economics of Immigration

A special event hosted by Current Affairs Magazine at The New School in New York City to celebrate the release of The Myth of American Idealism, the new book co-authored by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson. The panel explores Chomsky’s lifelong critique of U.S. foreign policy—from Vietnam and Iraq to Ukraine and Gaza—and examines why his radical analysis of American power remains essential.

Joining Nathan are leading journalists, scholars, and close collaborators of Chomsky who reflect on his influence, his moral clarity, and the urgent relevance of his work today.

Nathan Robinson - Co-author of The Myth of American Idealism, Editor-in-Chief of Current Affairs Magazine

Amy Goodman - Host of the independent global news program Democracy Now! since 1996, author of six books, winner of the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence and the Gandhi Peace Award

Bev Stohl - Ran Prof. Chomsky's office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over 20 years and is the author of Chomsky and Me: A Memoir

Greg Grandin - Professor of history at Yale University, author of Kissinger's Shadow, Empire's Workshop, and Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Award

Victor Pickard - Media studies professor, Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, author of America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform and Democracy Without Journalism?

📖 The Myth of American Idealism: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

📖 Chomsky and Me: https://orbooks.com/catalog/chomsky-and-me/

John Cassidy, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Capitalism and Its Critics, joins Nathan J. Robinson to explore the history of capitalism. Cassidy examines why capitalism has been criticized from its inception, the diverse range of critiques it has faced, and how these criticisms have evolved over time.

Through profiles of both iconic figures and overlooked thinkers, Cassidy unpacks the multifaceted critiques of capitalism, from its inherent exploitation and inequality to its destructive environmental impact. He also highlights the often-dismissed contributions of female critics and explores right-wing condemnations of capitalism, providing a thorough and nuanced exploration of the ideological battle over capitalism's role in the modern world.

0:00-7:15 Why Criticize Capitalism?

7:15-9:58 The Different Flavors of Capitalism

9:58-12:51 A Narrative-Driven History of Capitalism

12:51-16:44 Profiles of Capitalism's Critics

16:44-21:43 Female Critics of Capitalism

21:43-25:01 Most Ignored Critics of Capitalism

25:01-29:13 Right-Wing Critics of Capitalism

29:13-33:30 The Future of Capitalism

💰 Buy John Cassidy's Book: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374601096/capitalismanditscritics/

Nathan J. Robinson, editor of Current Affairs, reads his article "The Problem Goes Well Beyond Biden" 

🦚 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-problem-goes-well-beyond-biden 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

Chas Freeman is one of the most insightful voices in U.S. foreign policy, with a distinguished career as a diplomat and a deep expertise in U.S.-China relations. In this conversation with Nathan J. Robinson, Freeman offers a searing critique of America's current approach to diplomacy, the global balance of power, and its role in key international conflicts.

Freeman challenges the pervasive "China threat" narrative, arguing that the U.S. has misunderstood China's rise and wrongly positioned it as an existential threat. He compares the foreign policy approaches of Presidents Biden and Trump, highlighting the surprising continuities in their handling of China. Freeman also deconstructs the oversimplified and inflammatory discourse surrounding Taiwan, calling for a more nuanced understanding. Shifting to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Freeman explains how U.S. diplomatic failures helped fuel the war and why America’s actions have deepened the crisis. Finally, Freeman offers a sharp critique of U.S. policy towards Israel, urging the U.S. to stop enabling Israel’s expansionist policies and to push for a real peace agreement with the Palestinians.

0:00-6:03 The Decline of American Diplomacy

6:03-15:26: China

15:26-18:30: Biden v. Trump Approach to China

18:30-23:58: Taiwan

23:58-35:07: Russia/Ukraine

35:07-49:09: Israel/Palestine

🤝 Buy Chas Freeman's Books: https://chasfreeman.net/books-and-publications/

Ted Rall is one of the most influential political cartoonists on the left today. In his new book “What’s Left: Radical Solutions for Radical Problems," he presents a manifesto for left-wing politics in 2025, blending incisive analysis with his political cartoons.

Rall outlines what it means to be a leftist in an era where the Democratic Party has abandoned progressive ideals. He argues that the left must focus on real, substantive demands — from healthcare and the defense budget to a livable wage, offering both a critique of the past and a vision for what the future could hold if we organize around principles that actually improve people's lives.

0:00-7:04 A Manifesto for the Left

7:04-11:49 Defining Core Leftist Values

11:49-19:20 The Power of Simplifying Complex Ideas

19:20-27:48 Liberals vs. Leftists

27:48-41:17 Key Priorities for the Left

41:17-46:58 The Broad Appeal of Left-Wing Ideas

🎨 Buy Ted's Book: https://rall.com/2025/05/01/book-ted-rall-whats-left

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

America is in crisis, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Around the world, other countries have already solved many of the problems we’re told are unsolvable here: from unaffordable healthcare to lack of parental leave, crumbling infrastructure, climate disaster, and more. So why can’t the U.S. do what other nations have already done?

We’re joined by journalist and lecturer Natasha Hakimi Zapata, author of Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe, a new book that explores how other countries have tackled problems the U.S. treats as unsolvable. From universal healthcare in the U.K. to paid family leave in Norway, public housing in Singapore, and green energy in Uruguay, Zapata shows what’s possible and how it was achieved. She traces the political fights, the movements, and the leadership that made these victories real, offering lessons for Americans ready to demand more. The solutions exist. The question is whether we’re willing to fight for them. 

0:00–15:17 The Fight to Create the NHS 

15:17–21:44 Parental Leave & Childcare That Actually Works 

21:44–27:00 Why These Aren’t “Handouts” 

27:00–29:32 How Singapore Made Public Housing Work 

29:32–33:52 Estonia’s Model of Digital Democracy 

33:52–36:47 Uruguay’s Green Energy Revolution 

36:47–45:23 How to Win These Fights in the U.S. 

🌎 Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/Another-World-Possible-Lessons-America/dp/162097844X 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

🦚 Read the article: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/douglas-murrays-expertise-is-a-sham 

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership 

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs 

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/ 
 

Lorne Michaels might be the most powerful figure in American comedy — and yet, most people barely know who he is. In this episode, New Yorker editor Susan Morrison joins us to discuss her new book Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, a deeply reported, wildly entertaining biography of the man behind SNL. We explore how Michaels built a cultural institution from scratch, reinvented the variety show format, and launched the careers of generations of comedy legends — all while staying deliberately out of the spotlight. Morrison explains how Michaels has shaped American humor and politics, maintained control over a live show for nearly 50 years, and earned a reputation as one of the most inscrutable and effective bosses in showbiz.

0:00–1:55 Spy Magazine vs. Trump

1:55–14:54 Why Lorne Michaels?

14:54–28:50 Reinventing the Variety Show

28:50–31:28 How SNL Shaped Comedy

31:28–34:21 SNL and Politics

34:21–38:01 Lorne’s Management Style

38:01–43:20 Favorite Sketches

🎭 Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/532520/lorne-by-susan-morrison/

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

Liberalism and socialism are often treated as opposites — but what if they’re actually part of the same fight for freedom, equality, and democracy? We’re joined by political theorist Matt McManus, author of The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism, a new book that challenges conventional narratives about liberalism, socialism, and the history of political philosophy.

McManus explains how thinkers from John Stuart Mill to John Rawls argued that true freedom requires not just political rights, but freedom from domination in the workplace and economy. He also addresses the deep confusion around the word "liberal" today — why many leftists recoil at liberalism after decades of association with hollow technocrats like Matt Yglesias — and why the older liberal tradition, rooted in egalitarian principles, is worth retrieving.

0:00–6:45 Why Political Philosophy Matters

6:45–23:34 Recovering the Radical Roots of Liberalism

23:34–27:20 John Rawls Was More Radical Than You Think

27:20–32:30 Can Liberalism Be Saved From Its Hypocrisy?

32:30–38:42 What Separates Liberal Socialists From Other Socialists

38:42–46:06 Why Understanding Liberalism and Socialism Still Matters Today

🌹 The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism: https://www.routledge.com/The-Political-Theory-of-Liberal-Socialism/McManus/p/book/9781032647234

🦩SUBSCRIBE TO CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership

🦩 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/CurrentAffairs

🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/

Most people never think twice about shrimp. But as it turns out, these creatures make up the majority of animals alive on farms at any given time—hundreds of billions every year. And the conditions they endure are often horrifying: overcrowding, eye mutilation, and inhumane slaughter methods are all standard practice. So why don’t we care?

We’re joined by Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla, chairman of the Shrimp Welfare Project. He walks us through the shocking scale of global shrimp farming, the mounting scientific evidence for shrimp sentience, and the practical reforms that can drastically reduce animal suffering.

0:00–5:20 Why We Care About Pandas But Not Shrimp

5:20–10:54 The Most Abused Animals on Earth

10:54–17:18 Can Shrimp Feel Pain?

17:18–22:36 Inside the Brutal World of Shrimp Farming

22:36–31:32 How We Can Make Shrimp Suffer Less

🦐 Yes, Shrimp Matter: https://asteriskmag.com/issues/09/yes-shrimp-matter

🦐 Shrimp Welfare Project: https://www.shrimpwelfareproject.org/

Sean is here today to discuss how our understanding of the world around us has developed over time, how much stranger the world is than our "common sense" perceptions of it would indicate, and how laypeople with no background in the physical sciences can begin to grasp and appreciate the deepest hidden truths about the Universe. Sean is an eloquent spokesperson for the view that a godless universe can still be a poetic and beautiful one, and there may be more connections between the political and the physical than it first appears...

Sophia Rosenfeld is a distinguished historian and the author of Common Sense: A Political History. She joins Nathan to discuss how the idea of “common sense” has been used as a political weapon—from Thomas Paine to Donald Trump. Rosenfeld explains how appeals to common sense can both empower ordinary people and shut down dissent, why the term has become central to right-wing populism, and how it helps mask deeply ideological claims as obvious truths. She also reflects on her new book, The Age of Choice, and the hidden politics behind the freedoms we take for granted.

0:00-6:04 How Trump uses "common sense" as a political weapon

6:04-16:15 How "common sense" is used to make radical ideas normalized

16:15-21:03 How "common sense" undermines expertise

21:03-27:57 What are the origins of "common sense?"

27:57-32:33 How "common sense" can be manipulated for good

32:33-39:25 The politics of “choice” and why freedom of choice isn’t always liberating

39:25-44:34 Is “common sense” real, or just a rhetorical tool?

🧠 Common Sense: A Political History https://www.amazon.com/Common-Sense-Political-Sophia-Rosenfeld/dp/0674057813

🧠 The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691164717/the-age-of-choice?srsltid=AfmBOoqca43cL20XoW5ImlNs1_bkxT9eIkiK_I08g7sKYOv9yWo0yvE0

Zohran Mamdani represents the 36th District in the New York State Assembly. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, he is currently running for mayor of New York City, hoping to unseat the controversial Eric Adams, who recently escaped federal corruption charges after signaling a willingness to help the Trump administration crackdown on immigrants. Mamdani is running on a platform of lowering the cost of living for New Yorkers. He joined Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss his city and his campaign.

0:00-6:12 What's the Deal With Eric Adams?

6:12-11:55 The Real Challenges Facing New Yorkers

11:55-14:43 The Rent is Too Damn High

14:43-19:48 How Zohran Plans to Win

19:48-21:59 Confronting Genocide from Local Office

21:59-26:51 Responding to Right-Wing Talking Points

26:51-29:56 Zohran's Vision for New York City

🗽 Zohran Mamdani's Website: https://www.zohranfornyc.com/

Joe Biden is gone, but we are now living with the consequences of Biden's presidency, and it's important in this moment to look back over the last four years and try to understand what exactly happened to get us to this point. Was Biden's presidency doomed from the start? Which of the many competing narratives about it is true? Was it an America-wrecking catastrophe, as Trump says, or an underrated golden age, as Biden's defenders would have it?

We are joined for this assessment by the world's leading Bidenologist, Branko Marcetic, who is the author of the 2020 book Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden, and has written a two-part assessment of the Biden presidency for Jacobin, Part I being on domestic policy and Part II being on foreign policy. Branko recounts the political history of the last four years, explaining how it all went wrong and we ended up back at another Trump presidency.

Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland of The Majority Report have spent years tracking the rise of the far right, the decay of liberal institutions, and the Democratic Party's refusal to meet the moment. They join Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to talk about what Trump and the conservative movement are really planning, why most Democrats still don’t understand the threat, and how the left can actually fight back.

“If you're looking for fraud and waste, everyone knows you start where the most fraud and waste is already on record—and that’s the Defense Department, which has failed seven, maybe eight audits over the past few decades. It has the biggest budget by far. If this were a genuine attempt to root out fraud and waste, you’d start there." —Sam Seder

Peter Beinart is one of the most important Jewish intellectuals writing about Israel today. A professor, journalist, and former liberal Zionist, Beinart has undergone a profound personal and political transformation over the course of his career. In this episode, he joins Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss his new book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. Together, they explore the religious, political, and moral narratives that have shaped Jewish identity in relation to Zionism, and why Beinart now believes that Jewish safety cannot be built on Palestinian dispossession.

“There’s a fundamental flaw in thinking that you can make yourself safe by making the people who live next door to you radically unsafe.” —Peter Beinart

Dr. Cornel West is one of the most electric and morally serious voices in American public life. A philosopher, theologian, activist, and jazzman of the intellect, West fuses the prophetic traditions of Black Christianity with a ferocious critique of capitalism, empire, and nihilism. His books—from Race Matters to Democracy Matters to The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought—confront the spiritual decay of our age with love, courage, and uncompromising honesty. Dr. West joins Current Affairs to reflect on the collapse of civic virtue in the American empire, the nihilistic impulse at the core of Trumpism, and the moral cowardice of our ruling elites. He challenges us to resist both neofascism and neoliberalism not with smugness or cynicism, but with a blues-soaked spirituality rooted in historical memory and genuine care for the most vulnerable.

“The blues is about wrestling with catastrophe but never allowing catastrophe to have the last word, because we have a love and a courage and a joy inside of us that can never be taken away.” —Dr. Cornel West

Francesca Fiorentini is a comedian, journalist, and host of The Bitchuation Room. She joins Nathan to discuss her viral showdowns on Piers Morgan Uncensored, why compromising with the right is a losing strategy, and why the left-wing resistance should be bold and aggressive—but also fun.

0:00–12:32 Piers Morgan

12:32-22:27 Why we can't meet the right halfway

22:27-25:57 James Carville and the liberal resistance

25:57-29:19 Luigi Mangione

29:19-35:31 The class war is on

35:31-38:22 Does the Democratic Party have what it takes?

38:22-41:16 We have to get money out of politics

41:16-44:24 The resistance should be fun

Eric Blanc is the author of We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big, which covers the recent wave of unionization drives in America and summarizes the lessons we can learn from them. Eric shows that today's new unions have succeeded against incredible odds through bottom-up organizing: the workers themselves decide to organize a union, rather than existing large unions launching campaigns. Eric argues that we can learn from what baristas and Amazon workers and media workers have been doing, and that there is a substantial possibility of reversing the ongoing decline in unionization rates. His book is a vital toolkit for those seeking to transform their workplaces and the world, and he joins to day to give us clear, concrete lessons that he gleaned from hundreds of interviews with union members around America.

"Courageous shop-floor organizers have dared to take on corporate behemoths, from Amazon to Starbucks to Volkswagen. Waves of unionization have begun to spread across multiple industries, including higher education, journalism, food service, auto, social services, retail, tech, and museums, as well as nonprofits. And not only are workers fighting back—they’re winning. Despite widespread assumptions among labor leaders and pundits that lightly-staffed organizing can’t compel employers to collectively bargain, workers have won first contracts in a wide range of industries and companies, including at deep-pocketed chains like Apple. Grassroots workplace fightbacks have also wrested major concessions for millions more workers. No less importantly, these struggles have empowered and transformed their protagonists. In a society where people are conditioned to quietly obey bosses—and at a moment in history marked by pervasive hopelessness—joining together with your coworkers to fight back can be an ecstatic, liberating experience." — Eric Blanc, We Are The Union

Dr. Genevieve Guenther, the founding director of End Climate Silence, thinks a lot about one of the most important questions of our time: How we can combat climate change denial and actually bring about the transformations to our energy systems that will halt runaway climate catastrophe. She has written a book, The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It, that looks at how climate change is discussed in the media and how we can talk about it more effectively in ways that actually show people what the problem is and give them actionable solutions to fight for. She stresses the importance of avoiding "doomerism" and maintaining hope through action. She joins us today for a NON-doomerist conversation on the present state of the climate movement and what we should be doing right now.

"It's so hard to think about the future in America right now, and that's in part because the future is going to be a future with climate change in it. And either the future is going to involve resolving the climate crisis and creating a new system and a new form of human flourishing, or it's going to be death by a thousand cuts. [So] when you start thinking about this stuff, if you start to have feelings of grief or terror or depression or hopelessness, just know that that comes with the territory. It's normal. You're not the only one. But it doesn't mean that it's hopeless. You're taking on these feelings because you have courage. It's a sign of your bravery. But don't think about the stuff you can't control. Don't think about the scientific impacts that feel overwhelming or somehow too scary and depressing to deal with. Take your attention and focus it on the people who are preventing us from halting the climate crisis." — Genevieve Guenther

Rob Larson is Current Affairs' In-House Economist. He is also the author of Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do with Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them Even More. Rob covers the grotesque contrast between the lives of the rich and poor in this country, and the outsized power that the super-rich have over our lives. He shows how our country's wealth is squandered and outlines strategies for ending the plutocracy.

Rob and Nathan's article on the Wall Street Journal's Mansion section is here. This interview pairs well with Michael Mechanic's episode about his book Jackpot.

This book is not just for ogling the velvet lives of the ruling class, although there’s plenty of room for that. It’s about taking the rich out of the cockpit of society and putting a democratic system in their place. Because beyond their multiple gigantic homes and private jet miles, the control of the ruling class over the rest of us is pretty stunning, not to mention utterly grossly undeserved... To achieve anything, important labor and environmental movements require a good understanding of what’s going on—including the shifting strategies of the owning class and their corporate property. The point of this book is not just to study the rich, but to learn their vulnerabilities, and to help build the growing movements that could put some limits back on the power of the ruling class that owns our economy and runs the government. — Rob Larson, Mastering the Universe

Today we are joined by Flint Dibble, who last year attempted the ambitious task of explaining science and critical thinking to Joe Rogan. Rogan has been a promoter of the pseudo-archaeology of a man named Graham Hancock, who argues that mainstream archaeologists are covering up the evidence of a lost advanced civilization in the Ice Age that could have been the real-life Atlantis. Dibble went on The Joe Rogan Experience to debate Hancock and show why Atlantis isn't real. He may not have succeeded in convincing either Rogan or Hancock to accept the findings of mainstream archaeology, but he did very effectively present the case for real science over crankery.

Today, Flint Dibble joins to explain how ordinary people can avoid being taken in by pseudo-experts and why real science is so much more interesting and powerful than pseudoscience. He situates the war over Atlantis within the greater context of the doubt that people like Rogan have that mainstream expertise on a subject can ever be trusted, which leads to the embracing of many beliefs that are dangerous and faulty. But in a world filled with charlatans, how do you know who is telling the truth? Flint tells us what archaeologists really do so that we can think critically when confronted with wild claims by people who insist that all of the experts are covering up the truth.

Nathan's article on Joe Rogan and Atlantis is here.

We are joined today by Dr. Adam Gaffney, the former head of Physicians For a National Health Program, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and the author of the book To Heal Humankind: The Right to Health in History. Adam is one of the most articulate and effective champions of Medicare For All, having once fought five Fox Business Channel commentators at once. Today he joins to discuss why Medicare For All is still the #1 best way we can improve people's healthcare. He responds to common objections, and Nathan challenges him with quotes from the author of the book The False Promise of Single-Payer Healthcare. Adam shows why the objections are silly and we need to build a consensus around the necessity of a single-payer plan.

Today, Nathan is joined by Malaika Jabali as co-host along with Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix, authors of the book Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a Dangerous Idea. They join us in the wake of the killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson. The alleged killer's manifesto said that he was motivated over the hideously unfair practices of the insurance industry, and polling shows Americans blame the healthcare system (as well as the killer himself) for Thompson's death. But assassinations are not social movements. They don't fix the system, as Nathan argues in a piece on the killing. What kind of movement do we need on health justice, then? Leah and Astra help us think through how we can organize for meaningful improvements in the healthcare system.

Adam McKay is a writer and film director who has made some of the most successful comedy films of our century, including Anchorman (No. 6 on Time Out's top 100 comedy films of all time), Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys. In the last decade, his more dramatic and political films like Vice and The Big Short have attracted critical acclaim and been nominated for multiple Academy Awards. He joins us today to discuss the film he released in 2021, Don't Look Up, a satirical look at the climate catastrophe that uses the analogy of an approaching deadly comet to expose how the media, corporations, and the political system are incapable of addressing a major crisis. When Don't Look Up came out, it quickly became one of the most popular movies in Netflix's history, but many critics assailed it as "heavy-handed." In Current Affairs, Nathan wrote an article arguing that these critics were missing much of the penetrating leftist analysis that makes the film a remarkably astute piece of satirical fiction.

Today Adam joins to talk about Don't Look Up: what the film was saying about our world, what Adam hopes the audience gets out of it, what critics didn't get, and why the film should get us talking about the climate crisis itself rather than just analyzing the film.

Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist with a unique, albeit controversial, take on the idea of "wokeness," laid out in his new book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. Essentially al-Gharbi argues that among elites, a kind of social justice language has come to be important for maintaining and enhancing their status, but has little to do with meaningfully advancing justice in the real world. He points out the contradiction between the embrace of "woke" language among many elites and their behavior. They are not, he says, and have never been, woke in any real sense, and conservatives are missing what is actually going on when they treat these people as dangerous radicals. Instead, al-Gharbi argues, there is nothing radical at all about the strands of "wokeness" found in the Ivy League.

Al-Gharbi's argument doesn't entirely persuade Nathan, and al-Gharbi joins today to answer some probing questions, like: how do we know that the use of this language is an effort at self-advancement rather than a good-faith presentation of a set of ideas that should be judged on their merits? But while al-Gharbi is a critic of much contemporary social justice discourse, he is a constructive one, who shares the goal of achieving a society free of racial and economic injustice. This makes his criticism all the more interesting and worth engaging with.

it would be mortifying for people on all sides of this argument to recognize that what they are actually fighting over is how future generations of elites understand, describe, and legitimize their social position. One side instead pretends as though CRT-associated ideas represent the "authentic" will and interests of most "people of color." The other side pretends as though an embrace of these ideas will somehow harm their children. In reality, mastering these frameworks will enhance students' social status and professional flourishing. And this is why elite schools are pushing it. - Musa al-Gharbi, We Have Never Been Woke

Thomas Frank, historian, journalist, and author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? and Listen, Liberal, joins us to dissect how Democrats abandoned populism, the rise of Trump’s faux-populism, and why the party refuses to embrace the working class. He also explores the path forward for authentic left-wing populism in the face of neoliberal failures.

Video version of this podcast is here.

“The Democrats posture as the “party of the people” even as they dedicate themselves ever more resolutely to serving and glorifying the professional class. Worse: they combine self-righteousness and class privilege in a way that Americans find stomach-turning. And every two years, they simply assume that being non-Republican is sufficient to rally the voters of the nation to their standard. This cannot go on.

Yet it will go on, because the most direct solutions to the problem are off the table for the moment. The Democrats have no interest in reforming themselves in a more egalitarian way. There is little the rest of us can do, given the current legal arrangements of this country, to build a vital third-party movement or to revive organized labor, the one social movement that is committed by its nature to pushing back against the inequality trend.” — Thomas Frank, Listen, Liberal

Zohran Mamdani represents the 36th District in the New York State Assembly. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, he is currently running for mayor of New York City, hoping to unseat the controversial Eric Adams, who is facing federal corruption charges. Mamdani is running on a platform of lowering the cost of living for New Yorkers. He joins today to discuss his city and his campaign.

"This is also a moment of political uncertainty as well as political possibility. People feel failed by the answers they have been told for many decades. And while there is not a majority of socialist or progressive thinking across New York City, I would say there is a majority who feel left behind by this economic system and the policies of this current administration, and that is an ingredient that could give rise to an entirely new coalition of people who feel left behind and are ready to get behind a leftist in order to turn the page." — Zohran Mamdani

Brian Kateman is the head of the Reduceitarian Foundation and the author of the book Meat Me Halfway: How Changing the Way We Eat Can Improve Our Lives and Save Our Planet, which has an accompanying documentary. Brian has thought a lot about how to persuade people to help improve animal welfare in ways that actually get them on board and don't alienate them. Today he joins to discuss what's wrong with the food system, why animal rights matter, and how to get people to take steps in their lives that help animals.

Garrison Lovely wrote the cover story for Jacobin magazine's special issue on AI, which explained how leftists should think about the risks posed by the new technologies. He also recently wrote for the New York Times about AI safety, and has written for Current Affairs about psychedelic drugs and McKinsey. Garrison joins today to discuss what the real harms that AI could do are, why Big Tech can't be trusted to self-regulate, and how we can avoid a nightmarish future.

Listeners might also be interested in Nathan's recent article on the California legislation.

The United States’ current arrangement of managing A.I. risks through voluntary commitments places enormous trust in the companies developing this potentially dangerous technology. Unfortunately, the industryingeneral — and OpenAI in particular — has shown itself to be unworthy of that trust, time and again. — Garrison Lovely, The New York Times

Is our “child welfare” system successfully helping protect kids from neglect and abuse? Or is it inflicting widespread trauma through unnecessary, unjustifiable family separation? Dorothy Roberts, professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, has long been one of the country’s most deeply-informed critics of “child protective services,” which she argues systematically target poor Black mothers whose only parenting error is to be poor. Roberts is the author of Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World, which sums up over 25 years of her research into the subject. Roberts is also a 2024 winner of the MacArthur fellowship, commonly known as the Genius Grant. Today, she joins to discuss her work. 

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma surgeon who has served in conflict zones around the world. He authored a recent New York Times op-ed that surveyed dozens of medical professionals who had served in Gaza about their observations, including the targeting of children. He is also the organizer of the Gaza Healthcare Letters to the Biden administration. He joins today to discuss the level of harm that has been inflicted on Gaza civilians and why he and other professionals have concluded the Biden administration is supporting a major crime against humanity.

Warning: this episode contains graphic descriptions of violence.

A video of this episode can be found here.

"It's a disaster, and it's going to be multigenerational, with absolutely no question. Not only are these children traumatized, but they've been malnourished for a year. Their brains are not going to develop normally. And people often talked about the Palestinians just being serial killers and psychopaths and stuff. But if you wanted to make sure that there are people with serious problems, with serious difficulties concentrating, with serious difficulties understanding peaceful resolution of problems, now you've guaranteed it for an entire generation, in fact." - Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

Richard Seymour is one of the most learned and provocative leftist writers in the world. He has written books on subjects ranging from social media (The Twittering Machine) to British Labour politics (Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics) to liberal apologists for imperialism (The Liberal Defense of Murder) to the career of Christopher Hitchens (Unhitched). On whatever he writes about, Seymour is well-read and thoughtful, posing challenging ideas in elegantly-crafted prose. Today he joins to talk to us about "disaster nationalism," the apocalyptic brand of right-wing politics that Seymour says is on the ascent, and threatens to destroy liberal civilization as we know it. It's not necessarily an encouraging conversation, but Seymour encourages us to look honestly at the dark trends in right-wing politics in our time, and to be cognizant of the extent of the threat we face. Helping us understand what the right believes and what it might be capable of, Seymour's warnings could not be more timely as we get closer and closer to an election that might see Donald Trump returned to power.

"Reaction always thrives on the prospect of annihilation. ‘American carnage’, ‘white genocide’, ‘death panels’, ‘invasion’, ‘great replacement’, ‘Islamisation’, ‘treason’, ‘cultural marxists’, ‘scum’, ‘communism’. The erosion and  threatened destruction of worlds of power resembling, from its ideological purview, civilisational collapse, defeat, devastation. With which it is both appalled and enthralled... Amid the decomposition of the old party system, the legacy media, and associated forms of public authority, political forces organising around the nation and its enemies have won the major battles of the last decade. What is more, incumbency has been incredibly forgiving of their failures, their political gains proving far less fragile than those of the Left... The phrase ‘disaster nationalism’ implies something disastrous, or exploitative of disaster, or in elective affinity with disaster, or opaquely drawn to, or hurtling toward, or yearning for disaster. It is all of this." — Richard Seymour

Carolyn Dupont, a professor of history at Eastern Kentucky University, is one of the country's leading experts on the Electoral College. She is the author of the book Distorting Democracy The Forgotten History of the Electoral College—and Why It Matters Today, which debunks defenses of the Electoral College and shows why it's harmful to democracy. She joins us today to help us better understand this peculiar system and to go through the arguments in favor of it. Prof. Dupont notes in particular that the "Electoral College" we have today bears little resemblance to the system the Founding Fathers actually set up, which means that we can't appeal to their "intent" in order to defend it. She explains how this system came into being, how it changed over the years, and how it fails at achieving its supposed purposes, like giving small states a voice.

Listeners may be interested in the Current Affairs article by Alex Skopic on the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is one possible way to neutralize the Electoral College for good.

"This system increasingly returns results that threaten to undo the expressed wishes of a majority of voters, and these “misfires” profoundly damage the body politic... From its inception, Americans have disliked the Electoral College. In recent decades this dissatisfaction has shown up in polling, but it has manifested over the life of our nation in other ways. In the earliest days of our republic, even the men who helped create the Electoral College recommended key changes. Since then, more than 700 proposals to alter or abolish it have been introduced into Congress—more than on any other topic." - Carolyn Dupont, Distorting Democracy

Osamah Khalil of Syracuse University is the author of A World of Enemies: America’s Wars at Home and Abroad from Kennedy to Biden, a vital history of the wars of the last 50 years. Prof. Khalil shows how, from the Vietnam war to the present day, American leaders (and American pop culture) conjured a "world of enemies" in which force was preferable to diplomacy. A cast of rotating villains (from Ho Chi Minh to Saddam Hussein to Hamas) are treated as existential threats to freedom and democracy, and because they are monstrous they cannot be negotiated with and can only be destroyed. Prof. Khalil joins today to discuss his work, which argues that our militaristic attitude toward the rest of the world has also come to characterize domestic political discourse.

"American militarism has not been limited to foreign battlefields. Politicians and policymakers have insisted that Americans are engaged in an existential struggle against foes seen and unseen, foreign and domestic. Thus, militarism has seeped into everyday American life as the United States has not settled for defeat or victory but for war as a permanent state." - Osamah F. Khalil

Those who value this conversation will also probably want to check out The Myth of American Idealism, out now from Penguin Random House.

Recently, New York Times columnist Pamela Paul made an argument for aggressively policing subway fare evasion. To explain why a major new crackdown is necessary, she cited "broken windows theory," which she said that progressives refuse to admit "works." She explained that allowing minor crimes "invites graver forms of crime," which is why we need to make sure laws against seemingly minor crimes are enforced. This is the core of the argument made in The Atlantic in 1982 by two political scientists, who argued that when a community allows small offenses (like broken windows) to go unpunished, soon the whole place is going to hell in a handbasket.

But the broken windows theory was a fraud. The writers of the original article did not produce evidence that it was true, and indeed there hasn't been evidence produced since to show that it's true. Joining us today is Bernard Harcourt of Columbia Law School, who wrote the first book critical of broken windows policing, The Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing(2004). At the time the book was written, "broken windows" was credited with having produced major crime reductions across the country. Today Prof. Harcourt joins to explain how this theory became so popular. One reason, he says, is that it appealed to both liberals and conservatives: liberals because policing "order" was seen as an attractive alternative to mass incarceration, conservatives because it advocated aggressively keeping unruly poor people in check. But the evidence for the theory just wasn't there, and Prof. Harcourt explains that it ended up serving as the intellectual foundation for outrages like the mass stopping and frisking of young Black men.

"The broken windows theory and order-maintenance policing continue to receive extremely favorable reviews in policy circles, academia, and the press. Ironically the continued popularity of order-maintenance policing is due, in large part, to the dramatic rise in incarceration. Broken windows policing presents itself as the only viable alternative to three- strikes and mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Order-maintenance proponents affirmatively promote youth curfews, anti-gang loitering ordinances, and order-maintenance crackdowns as milder alternatives to the theory of incapacitation and increased incarceration. ... [But] decades after its first articulation in the Atlantic Monthly, the famous broken windows theory has never been verified. Despite repeated claims that the theory has in fact been "empirically verified" , there is no reliable evidence that the broken windows theory works."

The evidentiary problems with broken windows are also discussed in Nathan's recent essay about The Atlantic.

Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have recently been pushing vicious racist fake news about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, claiming they are stealing and eating people's pets and destroying the town. But why are there Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio in the first place? What role has U.S. foreign policy played in driving Haitians from Haiti? Today, we are joined by Jonathan Katz, one of the leading journalists writing about U.S. imperialism and a specialist in Haiti. Katz tells us about the history of U.S. relations with Haiti, common misconceptions about the country, and the deeper meaning of the Springfield pet-eating scare, and how it fits with longstanding racialized narratives about threatening Haitians.

The former Port-au-Prince bureau chief for the Associated Press, Katz is the author of the books The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster and Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire. His newsletter can be found here.

It is not a matter of whether the United States should get involved in Haiti following the first presidential assassination there in more than a century. The United States is already deeply involved. The questions are how that involvement helped, at a minimum, to set the stage for the crisis now enveloping a nation of 11.5 million people and what to do with that reality from here on out...Ever since Haiti won its independence from France in a slave revolution that culminated in 1804, the mere idea of a republic run by self-liberated Black people has sent shivers through the white world. -Jonathan Katz, "U.S. Intervention in Haiti Would Be a Disaster—Again," Foreign Policy (2021)

This week The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers The World was finally released! The book, co-written by Noam Chomsky and Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson. Today, Nathan joins managing editor Lily Sánchez and associate editor Alex Skopic to discuss the book and introduce Prof. Chomsky's views on U.S. foreign policy, explaining why he finds Chomsky's warnings so important for our time. An article Nathan wrote further introducing the subject matter of the book can be found here.

This book is a huge deal for us here at Current Affairs, so please help us by spreading the word about it and encouraging those you know to buy it!

This book is in many ways an attempt to distill Chomsky's vision and critique of U.S. power. That major theme is that in U.S. political discourse, many of the criticisms of U.S. foreign policy share a certain premise. You can criticize U.S. foreign policy, but only within a certain spectrum. He points out that even critics of U.S. foreign policy argue that the United States makes mistakes, but it doesn't commit crimes. We have numerous examples of this in the book. Basically, when you talk about the Afghanistan War, it’s said, well, that didn't go well, but it was a well-intentioned war. In the Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War, he says it was a war begun by good men for noble reasons, but it was just a tragedy. In the case of the Iraq War: we meant well, we meant to bring democracy, and it's a shame it ended up a catastrophe. And Chomsky has always argued that a lot of U.S. policy does not consist of idealistic mistakes. In fact, oftentimes, the things that are horrifying about it are either intentional results of the policy, or at least are well understood to be likely consequences of the policy that are just ignored by policymakers. — Nathan J. Robinson

Today on Current Affairs, it's our second-ever musical episode! We're joined today by Danny Bradley, who has written many songs for Current Affairs. Today, we listen to a few of those and Danny plays us some other favorites of his live on the air, including his new tune about a manosphere-influenced "Hopeless Romantic." Danny and Nathan also discuss what makes for good musical satire, why folk music is wonderfully socialistic, and why Danny once wrote a song called "Fuck The Guardian."

A playlist of all the songs Danny has made for Current Affairs is here.

Today on the program, Malaika Jabali returns to discuss the issues that were left out of the first presidential debate, and why Democrats should not embrace right-wing framings of issues even if they think doing so is electorally pragmatic. Malaika is the author of It's Not You, It's Capitalism. Nathan's recent piece "What Doesn't Get Said" also addresses many of these issues. This episode is also available in video form on our YouTube channel. Nathan's book "Superpredator: Bill Clinton's Use and Abuse of Black America" goes into depth about one of the most infamous periods in which Democrats decided the best way to win elections was to talk like conservatives. A recent Current Affairs article by Alex Skopic on Harris's Dick Cheney endorsement is here.

Jordan Chariton of Status Coup News is a leading investigative journalist and the author of We The Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-Up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans, a major expose of one of the most outrageous scandals of our time, the Flint water crisis. Chariton has spent extensive time on the ground in Flint even as the mainstream media lost interest and moved on, and he joins today to explain why every one of us should understand this story of the poisoning of a city, which was not an accident and for which there has still been no justice.

"Infuriatingly, our mainstream national media ignores most of this and peppers us nonstop with the political horserace and political tribalism (and an unhealthy dose of sensationalism and conflict). We are, of course, living through extraordinary times with seemingly endless calamities erupting domestically and internationally. It’s hard to stay focused on one city’s crisis when we’re being hit constantly with one disaster after the next... But if there is just one thing you take away from this story, I hope it is this: please, don’t forget Flint. If we allow the poisoning of our fellow man and woman to simply fade away into the ether . . . don’t be shocked when it comes to your neighborhood next." - Jordan Chariton, We The Poisoned

Today Kat Abugazaleh of Mother Jones and Zeteo News returns to the program to tell us what the DNC in Chicago was like. How did the Harris campaign try to court influencers and creators? How were the influencers treated differently than the press, and what responsibility does a "creator" have, given that they're not journalists but are also not formally with the campaign? How did the Harris campaign deal with the Palestine solidarity movement? Kat, who was on the ground in Chicago at the convention, tells us what political conventions are really like and how it differs from the spectacle presented on television.

"[The creators] were treated a lot better than pretty much everyone else there. We had our own designated workspace that had free drinks. It was like nine bucks to get a soda there, but in the creator workspace, we had free beer, wine....There was a giant thing on the wall that said, "Creators for Kamala Harris.... There was a lot of incentive to be a cheerleader... It was definitely way more privilege than was given to any other place covering [the convention]." - Kat Abughazaleh

Jamie Peck is a writer, podcaster, and activist who has been involved with the "Stop Cop City" movement. Her recent presentation about the movement can be seen here. In it she explains what the "Cop City" plan in Atlanta is, how a movement to resist it came together, and the vast, alarming repression that that movement has been met with. Today, Jamie joins to tell us why the fight over Cop City in Atlanta affects all of us, and how the resistance movement successfully joined environmental activists and BLM activists, plus reformers and radicals, in a way that provides a template for good left organizing that pursues a "diversity of tactics."

Our previous interview on this topic with the ACLU's Christopher Bruce, which focused on the criminal legal case, can be found here.

Mouin Rabbani of the Middle East Council on Global Affairs is one of the most sober-minded, thoughtful, and morally clear analysts of the Israel-Palestine conflict. You may have seen him in action on the debate he participated in a few months back on the Lex Fridman program. Today, Mouin joins to answer questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict. What is Israel's "endgame"? Does it want a war with Iran? Why does Mouin believe Israel's actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide? Is the Biden administration actually seeking a ceasefire? Note that this conversation was recorded a couple of weeks ago, so some facts have changed. Mouin's latest article "The Charade of Gaza Cease-Fire Talks," can be read here.

Bev Stohl ran Noam Chomsky's office for over two decades. In her wonderful book Chomsky and Me(OR Books) she discusses the sometimes chaotic, never boring inside of Chomsky-world, with thousands of correspondents and visitors from around the world descending on a cramped MIT office laden with books and papers. She joins today to talk about her decades working with the most-cited living intellectual and keeping his life organized. She addresses the question so many have wondered: how did he manage to answer everyone's emails, in addition to publishing over 100 books and giving thousands of lectures?

My mind's eye lit up with images of Noam’s body hunching, hands hammering out thesis drafts, editorial letters, articles, statements of solidarity, petitions, lectures, professional correspondence, recommendation letters, arguments, and email. For decades. On countless keyboards. On manual and electric typewriters, then word processors, then progressively streamlined and ergonomically correct wireless keyboards, all the way to the smaller keys of his compact laptop, none of which cramped his fingers or hurt his wrists. His body, unlike mine, seemed to be built for endless typing. - Bev Stohl, Chomsky and Me

It's long been recognized that the U.S. criminal punishment system is aberrational, cruel, and broken. Our prison population is outrageously large. But how do we actually begin to dismantle the system? Premal Dharia, James Forman Jr., and Maria Hawilo have edited a vital guide to this question, showing that it's more difficult than it sounds, because so many different institutions (legislatures, courts, prosecutors' offices, police, public defense), each play a role in creating the outcome. In Dismantling Mass Incarceration, they go through each part of the system to discuss how it works, how it contributes to the problem, and paths we can take to fix it. The book features contributors from Angela Davis to our own Nathan J. Robinson, with the essay "Can Prison Abolition Ever Be Pragmatic?" Today, the editors join us to explain what's so wrong with criminal punishment, abolitionist vs. reformist approaches to thinking about it, and how we move forward.

Gideon levy is one of Israel's leading dissident journalists. His new book The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe is perhaps the harshest condemnation of Israel's war on Gaza from any Israeli. Levy joins us to explain why he believes his fellow Israelis are brainwashed into thinking Palestinians are terroristic and inhuman, and the hideous consequences of that ideology. He also explains that the U.S. could have stopped the war, and is therefore culpable for everything that has happened to Gaza.

How dare Israelis speak about a moral difference, or the moral values of the Israeli army, when this is the outcome? How can you say the Israeli army is doing anything possible to prevent it, when you know that the majority of victims in this war—there are no questions—are innocent people? Even Israel admits it. It’s not like a Hamas claim. There’s no doubt about it. No doubt about it that in no other war were 250 journalists killed. In no other war were over 500 medical teams killed. So many figures which leave this argument so hollow. - Gideon Levy

Keir Starmer took the place of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the UK Labour Party, and recently became the UK Prime Minister after Labour resoundingly defeated the Conservatives. Does this mean that Starmer has a mandate from the British public? What does Starmer stand for, anyway? How will he govern? How did he rise so fast in British politics? How did he manage to crush the left wing of the Labour Party?

We are joined today by one of the UK's leading experts on Starmer's life and career, Oliver Eagleton, the author of The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right. Eagleton tells us everything we need to know about the UK's new prime minister.

For more, read Alex Skopic's recent Current Affairs article "Keir Starmer Is A Disgrace To The British Labour Party."

“Starmer has not presented a unified, consistent ideology, hence the confusion over what he ‘stands for’. But he does have a project – a vision, of sorts – and a coherent strategy to achieve it, which is yet to be analysed in detail... We must rather uncover the more durable aspects of his thought-world and assess their relevance to the present conjuncture... “What kind of politician is he? Why was he perceived by many former Corbyn supporters as the optimal candidate to take the helm, yet subsequently unable – or unwilling – to fulfil the hopes he inspired? How can we explain his success in remaking the party along with his struggle to command public confidence? To what extent does he represent a meaningful alternative to the Conservatives?" - Oliver Eagleton, The Starmer Project

David Livingstone Smith is one of the leading scholars of dehumanization in the world, the author of books like Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It, and Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization. He joins us today to discuss how the dehumanization process works and why it's so dangerous when we start to use dehumanizing language, which we can do without noticing it. Prof. Smith warns that while the point seems obvious, many of the worst atrocities are committed by those who are fully convinced they are on the side of the good and righteous, and any of us can become a dehumanizer. We discuss examples from the treatment of Palestinians as animals to the worst historical genocides to parts of the American right treating leftists as "unhuman" enemies of civilization. Prof. Smith explains how the process works and how we can resist it.

Read Nathan's article on the Unhumans book here. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy tells us more about the dehumanization of Palestinians here.

In popular American stereotypes, Islam is a religion of submission, with right-wing politicians demagoguing about the supposed authoritarianism and repressiveness of Islam. But scholar Mohamed Abdou argues in Islam and Anarchismthat, in fact, there is a great deal of overlap between Islamic religious teachings and anarchist philosophy, and that by melding the two of them we can produce a philosophy that offers guidance for principled anti-authoritarian struggle. Today Prof. Abdou joins to debunk popular misunderstandings of Islam and to explain why he thinks the reconciling of anarchist and Islamic teachings offers us a new liberatory philosophy.

“Anarcha-Islām can help diasporic Muslims under Euro-American assimilation as well as Muslims in predominantly conservative societies such as Egypt to begin again the transnational radical recreation and re-imagination of their subjectivities and social justice orientations in a way that is conducive to Islām’s post-9/11’s confrontations with a Euro-American 'Age of Terror.'" - Mohamed Abdou, Islam and Anarchism

Today on the Current Affairs podcast, we're joined by two filmmakers, one of whom will be well known to longtime podcast listeners. Pete Davis founded the Current Affairs podcast and served as its original host. Pete and his sister Rebecca Davis have made a new documentary called Join or Die, which looks at the decline of civic life in America, focusing on the work of Bowling Alone author Robert Putnam. The film dives into history to show how, in days before our present epidemic of loneliness and atomization, Americans joined tons of local clubs, ranging from choirs to bowling leagues to the Elks. Putnam argues that these organizations are foundational to having a functional democracy.

In today's episode, we discuss why bowling leagues can have political importance. We also discuss the late, great Jane McAlevey, who makes a powerful appearance in the film (one of her last public appearances) to make the case that unions are exactly the kind of civic organization that is good for both its members and the society at large.

In keeping with the spirit of Join or Die, you can host your own screening of the film in your town and invite people to come watch and discuss it!

Jeremiah Moss (pseudonym of Griffin Hansbury) is the author of two books, Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul and Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York. Jeremiah's blog Vanishing New York has documented the disappearance of precious city institutions from delis to newsstands to theaters. Jeremiah's photography has previously appeared in Current Affairs. The New York Times, in its review of Moss' first book, says that "He begins no thought with 'on the other hand.' For Moss there is only one hand, and it is the hand of menacing greed and self-interest." You can see why he's our kind of guy. (The Times thought he was too hard on the rich, writing that "There is a case to be made that the enormously high price of living in New York (and Boston, and San Francisco) has had a positive ripple effect.")

Today Moss joins to explain what gives a city a soul and why he believes New York has lost a large piece of its own soul. He discusses what neoliberalism has done to culture and the effects of gentrification on beloved institutions. We discuss why "nostalgia" is actually healthy, why old, broken-down things can be good, and why people with money shouldn't be able to buy their way out of the inconvenience of living in a place with other people.

There is nothing nostalgic about fighting to preserve the economic and cultural diversity of a city. It has more to do with the present and future than it does with the past. Right now people are being evicted from their homes and businesses. Right now the city is choking on chain stores. Do we really want a future New York with nothing but Starbucks, banks, and luxury towers, where no one but the most affluent can afford to live? It's not regressive nostalgia to worry about that. It's forward-thinking anxiety. ...  I am absolutely nostalgic about the lost city—and why not? Pete Hamill called nostalgia "far and away the most powerful of all New York feelings." But those feelings don't invalidate the facts about hyper-gentrification and its part in the long history of Elites trying to strangle the wild and progressive city. Those feelings don't change the fact that New York is being systematically reconstructed to embrace a small segment of humanity and exclude the rest.

Dennis Fritz is the author of the new book Deadly Betrayal: The Truth About Why the United States Invaded Iraq(OR Books), which dives into the historical record to understand the Bush administration's motivations for launching one of the most disastrous criminal wars of our era. It's well-known by now that the stated justifications (the search for weapons of mass destruction) were lies, because Bush officials misrepresented the available intelligence and misled the public about what the evidence said.

But that raises the question: Why did they launch the war? Was it a war for oil? A war to secure our position in the Middle East? A sincere attempt to fulfill the dream of spreading democracy across the world? A war to punish Saddam Hussein's defiance? Fritz, who worked in the Pentagon during these years, has written "a detailed insider account of how a Pentagon cabal strategized to manipulate intelligence, pressure the United Nations, force a Congressional authorization for the use of force through political threats, and scare the American people after 9/11 into supporting an attack on Iraq." Ben Cohen describes the book as "a gutsy tell-all story about the bald-faced lies that led us to the disastrous invasion of Iraq.” Fritz joins us today to explain how the public was convinced to support a war of aggression, giving us lessons that are vital to learn if we are to avoid being drawn into future wars.

Dennis Fritz heads the Eisenhower Media Network, an organization of ex-military officials who offer critical commentary and analysis on the military-industrial complex.

Richard Beck is a senior writer for N+1 magazine and the author of the forthcoming book Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life. His recent article "Bidenism Abroad" in the New Left Review is a vitally useful analysis of Joe Biden's record internationally. He discusses the continuities and breaks from Trump's foreign policy. He joins today to discuss what Biden and his administration have thought they were trying to do, and what they have actually done.

"American hegemony certainly lives on for now in Europe, where compliant nato allies continue to fall over one another in their rush to hollow out social services and buy American arms. And the us may be able to retain economic dominance in a relative sense even if it never manages to reverse the slowdown in global growth, so long as its own economic power weakens less than that of its rivals. But after Gaza, America can no longer credibly claim global ‘hegemony’ ... Biden’s support for Israel, motivated both by strategic considerations and what appears to be a real inability on his part to see Palestinians as fully human, flies in the face of both American and global public opinion. Europe may hold on to America’s coattails for a while yet, but in the rest of the world, continued American supremacy will be based primarily on coercion." - Richard Beck

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most influential philosophers of all time. Interestingly, thinkers on both the right and left have found inspiration in Nietzsche, and his ideas show up everywhere from the anti-democratic elitism of H.L. Mencken to the liberatory politics of the Black Panther Party. There is an ongoing debate over whether Nietzsche is best categorized as a reactionary or a champion of personal liberation. Today we are joined by Daniel Tutt, whose book How To Read Like a Parasite: Why The Left Got High on Nietzsche offers a stinging critique of Nietzsche's core philosophical ideas, while arguing that we still ought to read and engage with them. Tutt explains why people of all political stripes have been so captivated by Nietzsche, what's valuable in his philosophy, and how we should read philosophers whose social and political visions we deplore. Warning: this episode is somewhat dense with philosophical terminology and social theory, though we try to keep it as light as we can.

“Nietzsche’s thought must be read as giving ideological support to a social order where both joyful affirmation and anarchic celebration are experienced at the same time as a cruel and brutal defense of rank order. This makes Nietzsche’s thought a Janus face which must be understood in its highs and lows. But we will argue that if Nietzsche’s reactionary thought is brushed over, ignored, or de-emphasized, then he performs a certain victory over the left that can and often does compromise any socialist or Marxist approach to changing the world. Moreover, his philosophy must be read as a comprehensive and esoteric strategy of reaction that has at its very center a political agenda. ” - Daniel Tutt

Kat Abughazaleh has watched a lot of Fox News. As an analyst for Media Matters, her job was to monitor the Fox primetime shows, producing videos documenting some of the most deranged stories to appear on the network. Somebody has to keep track of what's going on in the right's media ecosystem, and we're glad that Kat performs this valuable public service. Examples of her work include videos about Mike Huckabee's indoctrination program, the "right-wing Amazon", Tucker Carlson's post-Fox career,Conservapedia, and her weekly Fox roundups. We can laugh at the right's media, but its effects are alarming. Introducing Fox News to a market turns people more conservative and many people have disturbing stories of how their relatives have had their minds poisoned by the stream of hatred and paranoia that Fox transmits into their brains. See our Current Affairs profile of Rupert Murdoch for more.

Today Kat joins to talk about how right-wing propaganda works. What is the typical story? Why is it effective? How can we fight this stuff? How is the right trying to ensure that its messages go unchallenged? Kat tells you everything you didn't know about the right's media apparatus and gives us some practical advice for how we can combat it.

Jeffrey Sachs is an economist at Columbia University and the author of the book A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism, which argues that both Democratic and Republican presidents are worsening global instability. He joins today to explain his critique of American foreign policy. First, we ask Prof. Sachs how he went from being seen as an exemplar of the U.S. intellectual establishment (the neoliberal "Dr. Shock") to one of the foremost critics of that establishment. Sachs rejects the characterization and argues that he has been consistent in applying a vision for social democracy across his career. We then turn to some of the most pressing dilemmas in the world today from the war in Ukraine to tensions with China and Prof. Sachs explains why he believes U.S. policy is worsening the prospects for global peace.

Prof. Sachs' previous appearance on the program can be listened to here.

Washington seems of a single mind these days: more funding for wars in Ukraine and Gaza, more armaments for Taiwan. We slouch ever closer to Armageddon. Polls show the American people overwhelmingly disapprove of U.S. foreign policy, but their opinion counts for very little. We need to shout for peace from every hilltop. The survival of our children and grandchildren depends on it. - Jeffrey Sachs

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick is the Policy Director of the American Immigration Council and a leading expert on U.S. immigration law. He has testified before Congress several times and frequently appears as a public commentator on immigration issues including recently on the Chris Hayes podcast. He joins today to explain exactly how U.S. immigration law works at its most basic level, what makes our system so cruel and dysfunctional, and what changes to enforcement by both the Trump and Biden administrations have meant for those seeking to enter the United States.

"As legal immigration has become increasingly inaccessible, and our asylum system increasingly backlogged, people around the world are getting the message that the only realistic way they will ever be able to come to the United States is through the southern border. Yet despite this challenge, policymakers continue to focus only on the U.S.-Mexico border itself, rather than addressing the broader problems with plague both our legal immigration system and our humanitarian protection systems. Policymakers of both parties have focused the majority of their attention on finding news way to crack down at the border, rather than making the broader fixes necessary to avoid yet another failed crackdown that may temporarily reduce arrivals but fail to solve the underlying problems." - Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, testimony to Congress

Max (just Max) is the host of Unfucking the Republic (UNFTR), one of our favorite podcasts. UNFTR publishes intensively-researched deep dives into some of the most important issues in the world. One of their most recent investigations is into Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), an insidious cartel that has wormed its way deep into the basic structure of the American healthcare system. Today Max joins to explain what PBMs are, why they're hurting small pharmacies, and what needs to happen to curtail their influence. Nathan discusses the case of a family-owned pharmacy in his own hometown, Davidson Drugs in Siesta Key, Florida, which shut down after 65 years and blamed PBMs in part for making it impossible to continue operating.

The video version of UNFTR's report is here. A written version is here. The NYT ran an article on the subject a couple of days ago as well.

"Most people probably haven’t heard of the term Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM). But in the healthcare industry, PBM has become a four letter word, unless, of course, you are one. In which case, you’re killing it right now. And you have been for about 20 years. PBMs aren’t anything new. In fact, they’ve been around since the 1960s. But over the last two decades, these administrative organizations have become so big and unwieldy that they drive hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue each year. Just how big have PBMs gotten in the past few years? Big enough that the three largest ones are all in the top 15 largest companies in the United States." - "Pharmacy Benefit Managers, The American Drug Cartel," UNFTR

Kyla Scanlon is a leading online economics commentator and Bloomberg contributor, who regularly publishes TikTok explainers helping people understand the economy. Her new book In This Economy?is meant to help laypeople understand the economic forces around them that are so determinative in the outcomes of our lives.

Scanlon is the one who coined the term "vibecession" to describe the disjunction between certain "objective" economic indicators and people's "subjective" feelings about the economy. Some people have theorized that the public is simply being misled by negative media coverage into thinking the economy is worse than it actually is. But as she explains in this conversation, it's not so simple to disentangle the "subjective" from the "objective" in economics, and just because the "vibes" don't match the standard predictions, doesn't mean they're illegitimate or unfounded.

The year 2008 was very impactful for everyone. A lot of kids (myself included) saw their caregivers battle against uncontrollable economic forces. There were job losses, home foreclosures, a decimation of household wealth; almost no one was left unscathed (except the bankers who had caused the crisis). The younger generations were furious as they witnessed a system fail in a way they couldn’t comprehend. Economic stability, job stability, financial stability—all of those were big question marks. An image of parents holding their heads in their hands at the dining room table as they tried to figure out how to pay the mortgage is seared into the minds of many. It was a systemic failure that resulted in economic inequality and social disparities, and it didn’t seem as though the consequences were there for those who had caused it. The Golden Age of Grift had begun, and the first rug had been pulled. It was a world of fraud and deceit. Around this same time, social media started to pop up. For the first time ever, everything was broadcasted to the world, and feelings became assets that could be traded for likes and retweets. - Kyla Scanlon, "In This Economy?"

Nuclear weapons are always lurking there in the background, out in remote places where we don't have to think about them, but ready to be fired at any time. Journalist Sarah Scoles was interested to find out more about the people who maintain the system of nuclear weapons. What do they do and how do they explain it to themselves? In a very real sense, they have to spend their days preparing to commit the worst imaginable genocide, should the need arise. It's eerie and disturbing to realize how quickly an unprecedented horror could take place, and how much depends on having sane and competent world leaders.

Today Sarah joins to discuss her book Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons and what she learned about nuclear war and the systems that make it a terrifyingly real possibility.

For more on this topic, see these Current Affairs articles:

Taking World War III Seriously

Why It's So Hard to Face the Threat Posed By Nuclear Weapons

Pretending It Isn't There

Sarah's book was reviewed here in the New York Times.

Teresa Ghilarducci is an economist at the New School for Social Research and the author of Work, Retire, Repeat, which shows how the possibilities for having a comfortable and dignified retirement are slipping away.

We begin with a news story about a 90-year-old veteran who was pushing shopping carts in the Louisiana heat to make ends meet. Prof. Gilarducci explains how it can be that in the richest country in he world, a person that age can still be having to work. She shows how the pension system disappeared, why Social Security isn't enough, and explains how even the concept of retirement is beginning to disappear, with many arguing that work is good for you, people should do it for longer. Prof. Ghilarducci also explains how things could be different, advocating a "Gray New Deal" to help older Americans experience the comfort and stability they deserve after decades in the labor force.

"Working longer is not the solution to bad retirement policy. In fact, working longer is causing an insidious problem, eroding both the quantity and the quality of older people’s years. Not only is retirement—which is precious time before death—slipping away, but also retirement time is becoming more unequal,, .The nation should not depend on people working longer to make up for inadequate retirement-income security. Doing so only exacerbates inequalities in wealth, health, well-being, and retirement time." - Teresa Ghilarducci

Radley Balko is one of America's leading journalists on policing and criminal punishment. His book The Rise of the Warrior Cop is a remarkable expose of the militarization of local police forces around the country. Recently, Radley has produced several excellent essays on the authoritarian promises of Donald Trump and those in his circles.

Radley's pieces compile frightening evidence of what a 2nd Trump presidency might look like. In "Lines in the Sand," he discusses some of the possibilities like invoking the Insurrection Act, arresting or deporting critical journalists, purging the civil service of anyone who opposes him, etc. In "Trump's deportation army" he looks specifically at immigration, and what it would actually involve to fulfill Trump's stated ambition of deporting all undocumented immigrants. Whether or not this nightmare will actually come true, it is what Trump is pledging, and we should take Radley's warnings very seriously indeed. The scale of this threat is one reason why we at Current Affairs insist that no leftist could want a Trump presidency, and Trump should be taken seriously when he vows to build vast new deportation camps.

Radley has also recently produced a valuable three-part series (I, II, III) that responds to those on the right who excuse the killing of George Floyd.

"How we react to what Trump and Miller are promising will speak volumes about who we are and how we see ourselves. Will we see the kids — the kids they want to pry from the arms of parents and stash in an abandoned warehouse or crumbling shopping mall under armed guard — as our own kids, or as someone else’s? When they rouse parents and grandparents from their homes at gunpoint, herd them onto military planes, fly them to the border, then pen them behind barbed wire, outdoors, in 110-degree heat, will we see that as an assault on our own parents, grandparents, and ancestors, or as someone else’s problem? We can’t allow these things to happen, then later pretend we didn’t know. Because they’ve told us. There are no surprises here." — Radley Balko

John Ghazvinian is the leading historian of U.S.-Iranian relations, the author of the indispensable study America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present. His book shows how opportunities for positive relations between the U.S. and the Iranian people have been repeatedly squandered. From installing and propping up one of the world's most abusive dictators (the Shah) to ignoring overtures from Iranian leaders interested in reducing tensions, the opportunity to be a partner rather than an adversary to Iran has been overlooked. Unfortunately, hostility is met with hostility, and Ghazvinian does not know whether the U.S. and Iran can pull themselves out of the downward spiral of relations. Ghazvinian does not defend the current Iranian regime, and is fair in criticizing Iranian failures as well as those of the U.S., but his book presents Americans with crucial facts about their government's policies (from U.S. support for Saddam Hussein's chemical attacks on Iran to the rebuffing of Iranian attempts to cooperate) that should unsettle anyone who sees Iran simplistically as an irrational rogue state, or part of an "axis of evil."

“This myopic understanding of Iran carries over into the foreign policy arena as well. Today, every time Iran refuses to be dictated to, or attempts to protect its national interests, a chorus of U.S. congressmen, media pundits, and ideological opponents of the Islamic Republic portray it as “defiant.” Every time Iran shows flexibility or a willingness to compromise, it is accused of “stalling tactics” or “trying to divide the international community.” And anyone who tries to point out that Iran might have legitimate security concerns, or that it is behaving as a rational state actor, is smeared as an “apologist” for the Islamic Republic and is excluded from a say in decision-making. This points to a larger problem: the United States in recent years has painted itself into a corner in which the only acceptable response from Iran, ever, is complete and unconditional capitulation." - John Ghazvinian, America and Iran

With antiwar protests jeopardizing a Democratic president's reelection and an upcoming party convention in Chicago, 2024 has some eerie echoes of one of the world's most tumultuous years: 1968. Perhaps by revisiting that year we can better understand our own time. To see what lessons it holds, we turn today to Charles Kaiser, the author of the book 1968 in America: Music, Politics, Chaos, Counterculture, and the Shaping of a Generation. Charles reminds us why the year 1968 went down in history, and we reflect on the legacy of the activists of that generation.

Charles Kaiser's latest Guardian piece is here. Listeners may also enjoy Nathan's article "Life in Revolutionary Times: Lessons From the 1960s."

“We did experience hope in 1968: hope and ambition and amazing joy. But to millions of us, Bobby Kennedy's assassination felt like the resounding chord that ended Sgt. Pepper's: a note of stunning finality. For me, at least, I hope the memory of that trauma and all the others of 1968 will now begin to fade away, so that our dream to make a better world may once again become vivid.” - Charles Kaiser, 1968 in America

Jeet Heer has written two major essays about the intellectual legacy of the New Republic magazine’s 70s-2000s heyday. The first, from 2015, excavates the magazine’s history of racism and its role in Clinton-era “welfare reform” and in pushing Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve into public consciousness. The second piece, published recently, looks more broadly at the career of New Republic owner Martin Peretz: his racism, his hawkish foreign policy, and his role in creating the conservative “New Democrats” of the 1990s, who abandoned FDR-era liberalism.

Jeet joins us today to tell us more about why this magazine once mattered, and the enormous effect that such a small publication and a single man have had on the politics of our time.

"[Peretz's New Republic] promoted many of the worst decisions in modern American history: the killing fields in 1980 Central America, the invasion of Iraq, the downgrading of diplomacy and preference to military solutions in foreign policy, the neoliberal economics that have fueled inequality and instability, the brutalization of the Palestinians, the revival of scientific racism, and the persistent whittling down of the welfare state." - Jeet Heer

Jonathan Kozol is one of the leading critics of the U.S. education system, having written a series of widely acclaimed books across a 60-year career, including Savage Inequalities, The Shame of the Nation, and Letters to a Young Teacher. Today he joins to discuss his new book An End to Inequality: Breaking Down the Walls of Apartheid Education in America, which sums up his argument about what is wrong with the public schools and what we can do about it.

Anne Kim's book Poverty For Profit: How Corporations Get Rich Off America's Poor gives a partial answer to an enduring question: how come we spend so much trying to solve poverty but poverty persists? One major reason, Kim argues, is that parasitic for-profit industries suck a lot of the money out of antipoverty programs. The privatization of government functions has meant that plenty of money that should be going to the least well-off ends up padding the pockets of the already wealthy. Kim's book helps us understand why, for example, cities can spend so much trying to combat homelessness and not seem to actually do much to alleviate it. Kim shows us how our tax dollars get siphoned away, and lays out a blueprint for how we might use government far more effectively, if we abandon the mindset that privatization means "efficiency."

"The infrastructure of poverty is big business. And as such, it is a major component of the systemic barriers low-income Americans face. No systemic understanding of poverty can be complete without a hard look at the businesses that profit from—and perpetuate—the structural disadvantages that hold back so many Americans... Self-serving private interests have hijacked the war on poverty. Failures in governance and public policy have enabled predatory industries to thrive at the expense of low-income Americans and of taxpayer dollars." -Anne Kim, Poverty For Profit

Thomas Sowell may be the best-selling economics writer of our time. For decades, the Hoover Institution pundit has published books and columns introducing economic concepts to a popular audience. He has been acclaimed as a genius and maverick whose insights are ignored by the academy because they discomfort progressives.

But Dr. Cahal Moran, who runs the YouTube channel Unlearning Economics, argues that Sowell's free market talking points are shallow and mistaken. Cahal recently published the first of a two-part video debunking Sowell and introducing alternative ways of thinking about economics. Since Nathan has published his own long takedown of Sowell, we thought a conversation between the two of them might be illuminating and passionate.

Cahal's co-authored book The Econocracy is here. A review in the Guardian is here. His Current Affairs article "The Death of Econ 101" is here. Our episode with Jonathan Aldred, a fellow critic of "Econ 101," may also be of interest.

Steven Thrasher is a professor of journalism at Northwestern University and the author of The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. He has also recently been present at the Columbia protests over Gaza. He joins today to discuss what he saw at the protests, before moving on to discuss his concept of the "viral underclass," tracing how inequality and disease interact, from the AIDS crisis to COVID-19. An excerpt from this interview was played in our recent audio documentary on the Gaza protests. Prof. Thrasher's LitHub essay on the protests is here.

“Viruses challenge the concept that any one of us “has” one body. As they move freely between the lungs, bloodstream, and genitals of one of us to another, they show how we is a more relevant concept than you or me...The most fundamental, largely unexamined premise we have in the United States is the belief that I am me and you are you and that each of us is the master of our own hero’s journey. What if viruses teach us that there is no “me” and no “you” at all and that we all share one collective body? And that such individualistic thinking creates not only an underclass, but alienation across lines of class?” - Steven Thrasher, The Viral Underclass

Today we talk to David Austin Walsh, a postdoc at Yale and the author of Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right, a new book about the history of the U.S. right wing. Walsh is particularly interest in what the boundaries are (if any) between "mainstream" conservatism and the "far right." He goes back to the time of William F. Buckley and talks about the relationship between fascist sympathizing reactionaries and the "respectable" right, and how that relationship evolved over time. He joins today to help us better understand how to think about terms like "right," "far right," and "conservative."

A Current Affairs article about Buckley, including his King speech, can be read here. A previous Current Affairs podcast episode devoted exclusively to Buckley is here. A book review on the John Birch Society by Nathan at The Nation is here.

"Modern conservatism emerged out of opposition to the New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s, forming a right-wing popular front—a term coined by William F. Buckley Jr. in his private correspondence—with the openly racist, antisemitic, and pro-fascist far right. This coalition proved to be remarkably durable until the 1960s, when the popular front began to unravel as some conservatives proved to be unwilling to make even modest concessions to the demands of the civil rights movement and jettison explicit racism and antisemitism. These apostate conservatives would form the basis of modern white nationalism—and the boundaries between where “responsible” conservatism ended and the far right began were usually blurred... Twentieth-century American conservatism did not equal fascism, but it evolved out of a right-wing popular front that included fascist and quasi-fascist elements. This is the key to understanding how American conservatism embraced MAGAism in the twenty-first century." - David Austin Walsh

Bestselling author Johann Hari, whose Lost Connectionsand Stolen Focus have previously been discussed on this program, returns today to discuss his new book Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs. New weight-loss drugs have proved remarkably effective, but invite a whole host of questions. First, is a society where people take drugs to lose weight a healthy place? Should we be encouraging positive body images rather than the use of drugs to shed pounds? Shouldn't we be reforming the food system to be healthier rather than trying to counteract its effects with obesity drugs? And are the drugs even safe? Johann done voluminous research on the drugs and their effects and joins today to discuss what it means to have a society where people can radically change their bodies by swallowing a pill.

We need to radically change the kind of food we are given from an early age, so the next generation doesn’t become hooked on shitty, satiety-sapping foods and they don’t feel the need to drug themselves to escape them. There are risks to the weight-loss drugs; there are no risks to becoming more like the Japanese. - Johann Hari, Magic Pill

Who actually comprises the MAGA movement? Where do Trumpian politicians come from? How do they defeat "establishment" Republicans on the local and state level? How much is organized from above? What's the role of Steve Bannon in all this? In Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy, Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post investigates the MAGA movement around the country, from Arizona to Georgia, showing how ordinary people get sucked into it and how Bannon and others are part of a long game that aims to fundamentally alter American institutions. Arnsdorf's book offers vital insights for those concerned with stopping this movement in its tracks.

“Are we gonna have some losses?” [Bannon] said. “Fuck yes. We’re going to get fucking rolled. And we may get rolled today. But that’s OK. At every defeat, there’s enough seeds of other victories that are there. People just gotta stay on it, understand that we’re winning more than we’re losing. That’s why—a revolutionary vanguard. This has happened before in human history, right? We have to take over and we have to rebuild it. Remember, it’s a Fourth Turning. ... That’s all to come. I’ve got a task and purpose. That’s for others behind me and others that are at the vanguard of taking this on and tearing it down to rebuild. It will have to be rebuilt. That’s gonna be huge. We’re not going to be rebuilding any time in the foreseeable future. We’re going to be taking things apart. They say Trump’s a divider. This is what I keep saying on the show—what’s my mantra? One side’s going to win, and one side’s going to lose. No compromise here” - Steve Bannon, quoted in Isaac Arnsdorf, Finish What We Started

When we think of American power, we often think of missiles, guns, and tanks. But operating in the background is an incredibly powerful weapon whose use often goes unnoticed: the dollar. In her new book Paper Soldiers: How the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order, Bloomberg News correspondent Saleha Mohsin explains how the dollar's power actually works. What does it mean for the dollar to be the "global reserve currency" and how does this confer power? What do sanctions do and what determines whether they succeed or fail? How do changes in the value of currency alter the relative power of countries across the world? Mohsin joins us to answer a few basic questions that are crucial for understanding the world today.

“ The seeds of its weaponization were sown in 1944 as World War II came to an end, began in earnest after September 11, 2001, and may have gone too far in 2022... If the currency falls from kingship, then the country won’t be the first superpower or empire to collapse because of fiscal mismanagement. While the dollar has changed the world, the world may now change the dollar. The biggest threat to its dominance doesn’t stem from outside its borders but from a rolling series of self-inflicted policy wounds further stoking doubts of whether the United States should remain at the center of the global financial system.” - Saleha Mohsin, Paper Soldiers

Becca Rothfeld is the nonfiction book critic for the Washington Post. Her new essay collection, All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess, draws together and expands on some of her best work. It covers subjects including Marie Kondo and minimalism, the films of David Cronenberg, the novels of Sally Rooney, and the new sexual puritanism. However varied the topics, a few important themes recur, including a rejection of utilitarian minimalism and an embrace of pleasure, and a view that fulfilling "basic needs" is not enough, because our "wants" matter too. The declutterers and the puritans strip away some of what is most essential to the good life. Becca joins today to talk about her arguments, including why she thinks Sally Rooney's egalitarian Marxism rings false.

Declutterers’ books, it turns out, are every bit as insubstantial as their slender clients. All the staples are short and snappy: though they are padded with cute visualizations and printed in big, bubbly fonts, they are rarely much longer than two hundred pages, and all of them can be read (or, perhaps more aptly, gazed at) in a matter of hours. In place of full paragraphs and complete sentences, they tend to opt for sidebars, acrostics, and diagrams. Kernels of advice are surgically extracted from the usual flab of prose. Language is a vehicle for the transfer of information, never a source of pleasure in its own right. To enjoy the sound or look of a word would be to delight, illicitly, in something needless, something exorbitant. Hence the declutterer’s penchant for lists and bullet points, for sentences compressed into their cores: “You Know You Are an Obsessive Organizer When . . . ,” “12 Ways I’ve Changed Since I Said Goodbye to My Things,” “15 Tips for the Next Stage of Your Minimalist Journey.” Visually, the results are reminiscent of an iPhone, with apps sequestered into adjacent squares. Each page in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up does its best impression of a screen. — Becca Rothfeld, All Things Are Too Small

We know the left is, generally speaking, anti-war and anti-imperialist. But if a left-wing government ever took power in the U.S., what would its foreign policy look like? How would it deal with, say, human rights abusing governments? Would it shun them? Sanction them? Would a leftist government send weapons to the victims of aggression? What would a left policy on Ukraine look like, for instance?

Van Jackson is a leading left foreign policy thinker. His new book Grand Strategies of the Left aims to think through the toughest questions about what it would actually mean to have a "progressive" foreign policy. Jackson notes that because the DC think tank world is dominated by hawkish "blob" types, a lot of the most thorough research and thinking on foreign policy is done by people whose values he rejects. In this conversation, we talk about how the existing establishment sees the world, and how we can look at it differently.

"In prioritizing what it sees as the foundational sources of global insecurity, the progressive perspective portrays itself as uniquely realistic compared to its prevailing liberal internationalist alternative. It diagnoses the problems that preoccupy militaries as the surface level of deeper political dysfunctions, making mainstream grand strategy and security studies appear solution-less insofar as they deal only with national defense policy or strategy. Progressive worldmaking, in other words, directs us to reshape the very context that gives rise to traditional security problems." - Van Jackson, Grand Strategies of the Left

Daniel Knowles is a reporter for The Economist (yes, that one). His book Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse argues that cars are a problem, and shows all the ways in which we could have more satisfying, sustainable, affordable lives with fewer cars. That's a tough sell in a car-loving country like the U.S.A., where we love our giant-ass trucks and our drive-thru daiquiri stands. Daniel is British: who is he to tell us we have to trade in our pedestrian-mashing SUVs for Chairman Mao-style bicycles?

Today, Daniel joins to make the sell for walkable communities, showing us all the ways cars cause problems, why the situation we're in wasn't inevitable, and how we can change our deadly, inefficient, climate-killing ways and have transit that better serves human needs.

“There is simply no good reason that the sustainable option—living in a decent-size apartment or rowhouse, in a neighborhood where you can walk, cycle, and use public transport to get around—ought to be so expensive, while living in an enormous detached house and using vast quantities of natural resources is the cheap option. It is only the case because of decisions made by our leaders over decades that have compounded to create a world where wasting resources is normal, and sustainable living is rare.” - Daniel Knowles, Carmageddon

Ben Burgis is a philosopher and occasional contributor to Current Affairs, who runs the Philosophy for the People Substack and hosts Give Them An Argument. Today, Ben joins to respond to common arguments made to justify the policies of Israel and the United States in Gaza. "Israel has a right to defend itself," "Palestinian violence is the root cause of the problem," and other talking points are put to Ben, who gives logically precise but passionate defenses of the Palestinian people's rights and dignity. Ben offers a crash course in how to effectively argue the case against the war on Palestine.

“While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” ―Eugene V. Debs

"Are you willing to fight for someone you don't know as much as you're willing to fight for yourself?" —Bernie Sanders

Political philosophy is full of talk about liberty and justice. But in Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea, Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor argue that another concept is just as crucial when we consider how society ought to be ordered and what we owe one another: solidarity. A solidaristic ethic means seeing other people's fates as intertwined with your own, and being committed to fighting for the interests of those whose problems you do not necessarily share. It has underpinned the socialist project from Eugene Debs to Bernie Sanders, and as Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor show in the book, it has deep historical roots. They trace the origins of the idea of solidarity, showing how it evolved as a crucial part of left thought and practice, and argue that what we need today is a reinvigorated commitment to it. They explain what it would mean to practice it, and the demands it makes of us. Today, Leah Hunt-Hendrix joins us to give us a tour through the history and show us what solidarity means. (Our recent interview with co-author Astra Taylor is also worth a listen and touches on some of the same themes!)

"With the planet swiftly tipping toward climate chaos and a right-wing reaction gaining influence globally, we have no choice but to attempt to cultivate solidarity from wherever we happen to sit. Individually, the vast majority of us are locked out of the halls of power and lack wealth and influence. The only viable pathway to exerting power is to organize from the bottom up. The solidaristic, internationalist, and sustainable world order we desperately need must be built virtue by virtue, relationship by relationship, struggle by struggle, day by day. Constructing a larger Us—one large and powerful enough to overcome the myriad obstacles in our way—is a hopeful and imaginative act: curious about other people, open to change, and determined to bring new possibilities into being." — Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor

Jessica L. Burbank is a broadcaster and commentator who appears on The Hill's Rising, co-hosts the Funny Money podcast, and now hosts her own online news program called Weeklyish News. Jessica is also big on TikTok, where she produces remarkable short videos communicating left political and economic ideas, such as this one on the power relationship between workers and bosses or this one on Elon Musk. Today Jessica joins to discuss how she thinks about the project of communicating ideas accessibly, using wit and operating within the limits of 21st century attention spans. 

John Washington is a journalist with Arizona Luminaria, whose new book The Case for Open Borders rebuts common anti-immigrant argument and shows that a world in which people can freely move from one territory to another will not create a "crisis" but will in fact benefit everyone. Today he joins to discuss the bipartisan rhetoric about immigration being a disaster or crisis, and to help us understand why militarized borders cause a lot more harm than they prevent. Washington argues that fears of immigration are overblown and instead of moving toward greater "border security" we should be reforming the border to relax admissions. 

The photo above is of the Arizona-Mexico border circa 1899, when crossing from one country into another was as simple as crossing the street. See also the Current Affairs article "We Need To Make the Moral Case for Immigration." 

"The case for open borders must ultimately be a positive one, explaining why the freedom to move—coupled with the freedom and possibility to remain—is a necessary good, and why a world not divided into exclusive nation states with militarized borders would be more egalitarian, would promote and cultivate diversity instead of fear, and would help form a world where sustainability and justice take precedence over extraction and exploitation." — John Washington, The Case for Open Borders

Grace Blakeley is one of the left's leading economic thinkers. In her new book, Vulture Capitalism, Blakeley explains how capitalism really works and gives a crucial primer on the modern economy. She joins today to explain why conceiving of "free markets" and "government planning" as opposites is highly misleading, because our neoliberal "market-based" economy involves many deep ties between the state and corporations. Instead of thinking of "capitalism" and "socialism" as a spectrum that runs from markets to government, Blakeley says we should focus our analysis on who owns and controls production, and who gets the benefits.

"The choice isn’t “free markets” or “planning.” Planning and markets exist alongside each other in capitalist societies—indeed, in any society. The choice is whether the planning that inevitably does take place in any complex social system is democratic or oligarchic. Do we allow a few institutions to make decisions that affect everyone else, considering only their own interests, or do we move toward a system in which everyone has the power to shape the conditions of their existence? We must stop talking about “free-market capitalism” and instead accept that capitalism is a hybrid system based on a fusion between markets and planning. Rather than seeing the world in which we live as emerging from mystical market forces beyond our control, we must realize that the world in which we live results from the conscious choices of those operating within it. When we are able to view the world in these terms, the space for conscious, democratic design of our world expands." — Grace Blakeley

Lewis Bollard directs the farm animal welfare program at Open Philanthropy, and writes the organization's farm animal welfare research newsletter. In the newsletter, Bollard has argued that animal welfare is a crucial moral issue and tried to explain the dissonance between people's stated compassion for animals and their willingness to tolerate animals' mass suffering in factory farms. Bollard explains the massive amount of work it will take to reduce or eliminate factory farming, and the setbacks including the challenges plant-based meats have had. He also shows, however, that there have been striking successes that should make the issue feel less hopeless and insurmountable, and actually major improvements to animal welfare are within reach. Today he joins to explain why the issue is a priority, why it's so challenging to mobilize people around, what has been accomplished so far, and what could be accomplished with more activism and political pressure. 

"We face a mighty challenge: ending the abuse of more sentient beings than humans who have ever lived on earth. We do so with few resources: all advocacy for farmed animals globally has a combined budget smaller than the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. And yet we’ve already achieved progress for billions of sentient beings." — Lewis Bollard 

Journalist Josie Cox is the author of the new book Women Money Power: The Rise and Fall of Economic Equality, a history of the 20th century women's movement that documents the remarkable courage of the women who gave us suffrage, abortion rights, and greater equality across many dimensions of social and economic life. Today she joins to discuss how those gains were made, but also the failures (such as the story of the Equal Rights Amendment). She also talks about how many of the striking victories for women's equality are now under serious threat of rollback. 

The day Henry Kissinger died, Jacobin magazine released a book, which they had completed years before, called The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger. In the book, edited by René Rojas, Bhaskar Sunkara, and Jonah Walters, a group of foreign policy experts trace Kissinger's career from continent to continent, showing the human consequences of his Machiavellian choices. But The Good Die Young doesn't just treat Kissinger as a uniquely malevolent figure, and shows how he fits into broader schemes of U.S. global dominance after the Second World War. Co-editor Jonah Walters joins us today to give a rundown of Kissinger's career, to explain what makes him an important figure, and to assess what his legacy will be.

"It’s small wonder that the political establishment regarded Kissinger as an asset and not an aberration. He embodied what the two ruling parties share in common: a commitment to maintaining capitalism, and the resolve to ensure favorable conditions for American investors in as much of the world as possible. A stranger to shame and inhibition, Kissinger was able to guide the American empire through a treacherous period in world history, when the United States’ rise to global domination indeed sometimes seemed on the brink of collapse." — from The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger

Read a Current Affairs article on Kissinger by Ben Burgis here.

Hamilton Nolan is a leading labor journalist whose new book The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor is both a study of recent labor organizing in our time and a strong case for why unions are vital to the health of the country. Hamilton goes around the country, from South Carolina to Las Vegas to New Orleans, showcasing the achievements of organized labor and revealing what is possible when working people come together to wield their "hammer" through collective action. 

He is highly critical of some of the country's largest labor unions for "fortress unionism" (protecting the gains of their existing members without organizing new ones). In today's conversation, he explains why union density has remained stubbornly low in the United States, and lays out a vision for what could happen once working people become conscious of the power that they can wield together. 

Marxist philosophers do not often write bestsellers, but as the New York Times wrote in a profile of today's guest, Kohei Saito's work has unexpectedly taken Japan by storm:

"When Kohei Saito decided to write about “degrowth communism,” his editor was understandably skeptical. Communism is unpopular in Japan. Economic growth is gospel. So a book arguing that Japan should view its current condition of population decline and economic stagnation not as a crisis, but as an opportunity for Marxist reinvention, sounded like a tough sell. But sell it has. Since its release in 2020, Mr. Saito’s book “Capital in the Anthropocene” has sold more than 500,000 copies, exceeding his wildest imaginings. Mr. Saito, a philosophy professor at the University of Tokyo, appears regularly in Japanese media to discuss his ideas. ... Mr. Saito has tapped into what he describes as a growing disillusionment in Japan with capitalism’s ability to solve the problems people see around them, whether caring for the country’s growing older population, stemming rising inequality or mitigating climate change."

Prof. Saito's book has caught on in Japan because it is a powerful statement of an important and challenging set of ideas. Saito points out the ecologically and socially destructive tendencies of capitalism, and argues for an alternative way of structuring the economy and society that could leave us (and the planet) better off. He calls these ideas "degrowth communism." Today he joins us to explain what he means, to respond to myths and challenges, and clear up misconceptions. Saito's book Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto is now available in English. 

Originally aired January 29, 2024

There is an ongoing case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) brought by South Africa against Israel, which alleges that Israel's conduct in Gaza constitutes a serious breach of the Genocide Convention. The Court recently issued a preliminary ruling allowing the case to go forward and requiring Israel to comply with its obligations under the Genocide Convention. 

Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept joins us today to explain the basics of the accusations being made against Israel, the Israeli government's response, and to give his evaluation of the evidence that South Africa has presented so far. Note that this interview was recorded before the court issued its preliminary ruling allowing the case to go further. Jeremy's analysis of the ruling can be found here. An analysis of the case in Current Affairs is available here.

During its presentation before the court, Israel made no arguments to defend its conduct in Gaza that it—and its backers in the Biden administration for that matter—has not made repeatedly in the media over the past three months as part of its propaganda campaign to justify the unjustifiable. Each day that passes, more Palestinians will die at the hands of U.S. munitions fired by Israeli forces and the already dire humanitarian situation will deteriorate further. - Jeremy Scahill 

Ingrid Robeyns is a professor at Utrecht University, where she specializes in political philosophy and ethics. She's the author of Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth, a new book which argues for rational limits on how much money a single person can amass. Today on the podcast, Dr. Robeyns joins to explain how the super-rich keep everyone else poor, how large concentrations of wealth damage democracy and the environment, and how "limitarian" public policies can become a reality. 

"There are many different reasons why you might endorse a limitarian worldview. There is the principled objection against inequality. Or there’s the fact that so much excess wealth is tainted. Society’s richest have appropriated an unfairly large part of the economic gains of the past century, and they need to redistribute that surplus. Or you might support limitarianism because it would do a huge amount to address existing power imbalances and protect political equality—to halt the erosion of democracy, and prevent the domination of politics by the wealthy few. Or it might be the fact that limitarianism can take us a long way toward saving our planet, given that the lifestyles, business strategies, tax avoidance or evasion, and lobbying of the super-rich have led to civilization-threatening ecological harm. A world on fire needs a lot of money to extinguish the flames, and the super-rich are holding on to money they don’t need. It makes much more sense to take the money for dousing the fire from the super-rich than from the middle classes, let alone the poor. The same point also holds for meeting other needs beyond protecting the livability of the planet, such as fighting poverty and other forms of deprivation. Collectively acknowledging that at some point enough is enough would also make the rich themselves better off. Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally: no one can claim that they deserve to be a millionaire."

- Ingrid Robeyns

Ryan Grim is the Intercept's D.C. bureau chief and the author of The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution. Ryan's book chronicles the rise of the "Squad" in Congress, but also chronicles the entire recent history of left politics in the United States including the Bernie Sanders campaigns and the legislative fights under Biden. The book is a fascinating insider account of how power really works. The Squad were all elected as insurgent Democrats challenging the party establishment. But once inside the House, they encountered a familiar dilemma: do you go to war against the party leaders, and alienate them, or do you try to work with them? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez herself, Grim reports, had conflicting impulses, but ultimately axed staff members who pushed for a more confrontational approach. Did the more conciliatory path gain the hoped-for results? Grim joins today to discuss. 

Who is the "Squad"? Are they just a media creation or do they act as a group? What differentiates them from other progressives in the House? What is their relationship with the party leadership like? What compromises have they had to make? Has their approach worked? All of this and more is put to Ryan Grim in our conversation. 

“Her staff and many of the backers of Justice Democrats wanted to go to war against the people they saw as in the way of progress, Riffle said. They wanted a real political revolution. “The difference of what Corbin and Saikat and myself and other people in the incoming AOC camp thought was, ‘These are shitty people. And the reason that these policies are bad is that the party is being run by shitty people.’ I don’t think [the Squad] thought that,” he said. “We thought you should burn it down because the house was occupied by shitty people. They thought we should burn it down because, you know, we can build a better house with better policies.” - Ryan Grim, The Squad 

Ed Broadbent was perhaps the best-known democratic socialist in Canada. He served for 14 years as the head of the country's New Democratic Party, after beginning his career as a political theorist. Broadbent's new book Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality (written in collaboration with, among others, Current Affairs contributor Luke Savage) is a tour through the last half century of Canadian politics, and for Americans it offers a fascinating window into what it looks like when a democratic socialist politician gets close enough to power to have to make serious policy decisions. Broadbent joins us today to introduce listeners to the basics of the Canadian political system and talk about what he learned over the course of his career, where he earned the respect of a wide swath of Canadians, to the point where he has been called "Canada's most iconic social democrat" and "the best prime minister we never had." We discuss how Canada built social democratic institutions, and how to have a politics critical of both state and corporate power.

[Note: Sadly it was announced the day after this interview was originally posted that Ed has passed away.]

"So, what is to be done? Are we going to sit back and watch conservative politicians capitalize on economic insecurity to erode the potential of the social democratic state and reimpose their new, hollow model of “freedom”? They see starving the state as the solution to our problems. Take away the power and money of the state, they claim, and humanity will be set free. I reject this blinkered vision. Generations of Canadians, notably after the Second World War, demonstrated that the opposite is the case. It was the establishment of social rights like health care, unemployment insurance, and national pensions that enabled millions of Canadians to feel free for the first time in their lives. Having been undermined by successive governments, the remarkable achievements of the democratic age are now at risk of full-blown collapse. Now more than ever, we require prompt and effective state action to respond to the new destabilizing threats to people’s livelihoods and preserve a sustainable life on this planet." — Ed Broadbent, Seeking Social Democracy

Mark Chiusano of Newsday knows George Santos better than anyone else, having covered Santos’ political career from its start to its recent ignominious end. His new book The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos documents the full rise and fall of our country’s most infamous lying legislator. Today on the podcast, Chiusano joins us to explain how it came to be that, in a country as committed to honesty and fairness as the United States, someone who lies shamelessly could make it into a position of power. The lessons of the Santos saga may tell us as much about who we are as a nation as they do about the House of Representatives’ most infamous grifter.

Transcript available here:  https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/12/the-journalist-who-most-understands-george-santos-explains-how-he-made-it-to-congress

Tim Schwab is an investigative journalist who's been reporting on Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation since 2019. His work has appeared in The Nation, the Columbia Journalism Review, and the British Medical Journal. He's also the author of a new book, The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire, which compiles many of his findings. Schwab argues that Bill Gates is far from the generous, kind-hearted philanthropist he's often portrayed as in the media. Instead, his reporting shows how Gates has constructed a "PR halo" around himself through his extensive donations to news outlets, many of which fail to report their financial ties to the Gates Foundation. He also criticizes the culture of secrecy that surrounds the Foundation itself, and reveals how the monopoly capitalism Gates practiced at Microsoft influences his decisions today, including his pivotal role in restricting vaccine patents that prevent poor countries from making their own life-saving medicines. Schwab's book shows how Gates has bought himself outsized influence in everything from education to agriculture, and how his influence has often been a malignant one. 

A sober analysis of Gates shows he is just as worthy of the titles of hoarder and miser as he is philanthropist and mensch. Relative to his vast wealth, Gates is giving away a tiny amount of money—that he doesn’t need and that he could never possibly spend on himself. So the question is: Instead of celebrating the million-dollar gifts his foundation donates, why aren’t we interrogating the $184 billion that Gates isn’t giving away? Why aren’t we asking: How is it that the world’s most generous philanthropist is becoming richer and richer, year over year?

- Tim Schwab

Current Affairs' own coverage of Gates can be found here and here. 

Peter Kalmus is one of the country's most visible and engaged climate scientists. He is the author of Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution and works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dr. Kalmus has advocated civil disobedience as a necessary means of spurring action to stop the climate catastrophe. Dr. Kalmus wrote a scathing article about the UN’s recent COP 28 climate summit, which was dominated by the fossil fuel industry. He joins today to explain why, as a climate scientist, he wants people to understand the basic fact that we have no choice but to eliminate the fossil fuel industry as soon as possible. 

"In fact, the laws of physics guarantee that it will get much too fucking hot if we keep burning fossil fuels. So, pardon my language, but I don't know what it's going to take. I'm really disappointed because I thought that at this level of heating, of obviousness, of disaster, that everyone would wake up and realize that none of our hopes and dreams will come to fruition if we don't have a habitable planet." — Peter Kalmus

A transcript of this interview is available here. Listeners may also be interested in our episode with Henry Shue, a moral philosopher on the obligation we have to future generations. 

Keira Havens is a science writer whose blog series "Box of Rocks" aims to identify and expose racist pseudo-science. She joins us today to explain some of the fallacious reasoning that is used to rationalize social hierarchies, and how proponents of toxic ideologies manage to cast themselves as mainstream researchers. We talk about the intellectual misdeeds of such figures as Charles Murray and Steven Pinker, and Keira shows us how to spot some of their bad arguments in the wild. 

"As profoundly boring as biological essentialism is, some people are very into it. The ones that are honest about it are easy to spot. It can be harder to identify those that cultivate a careful aura of plausible deniability and then go about building the rest of their career. By hiding their philosophy, they gain access to institutions and platforms, allowing them to pave the way for other useful idiots and convince the next generation that Science Says™ some humans are better than others. The networks manufacturing credibility for their theory of eugenics are not shallow. They run deep, across decades, built by people that devote themselves consistently and continuously to the promotion of hereditarian philosophies." — Keira Havens, Box of Rocks

Vincent Bevins is a journalist who has written for the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere, and is the author of the acclaimed The Jakarta Method. His latest book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (PublicAffairs) is about the mass protests that took place around the world from 2010 to 2020. The book shows how these protests were sparked, how they often went in directions their originators couldn't have predicted, and what legacies they left in countries from Brazil to Tunisia. 

The book is an invaluable source of lessons for activists; as the Current Affairs review of the book (by Raina Lipsitz) says, "Bevins shows that we can, and must, analyze and learn from the failures of our most inspiring movements." Bevins joins us today to take us through some of this history (much of it unreported in the United States) and the most crucial takeaways for protest movements of today. 

“As I spent years traveling around the world, talking to the people that helped create the mass protests described in this book, and interviewing the experts and government officials who tried to grapple with their meaning, I would always ask what they thought had happened. But I never did so to cast blame or to establish that mistakes were made. Most people who spoke with me know very well that things can go terribly wrong regardless of intentions, and the conversations often became difficult. Many of these individuals have suffered for years trying to understand the events of the past decade. I always put my question something like this: “If you could speak to a teenager somewhere around the world right now, someone who might be fighting to change history in some kind of political struggle in their lifetime, what would you tell them? What lessons did you learn?” — Vincent Bevins 

The "Manatee Facts Podcast" mentioned in the introduction can be heard here. Nathan's article about the remarkable power of new audio technology is here.

Philanthropy is a problem. Lots of contemporary philanthropy is either useless (Rich people funding new buildings for Harvard) or shouldn't have to happen in the first place (Nonprofits fulfilling crucial social roles that the state doesn't take care of in the age of neoliberalism). The standard left critique of philanthropy is that we should redistribute wealth and income rather than depending on the largesse of the bourgeoisie, who have far too much damned money. But Amy Schiller, in The Price of Humanity, goes beyond this critique, and argues that we can engineer a better concept of philanthropy. First, she argues that we need a social democratic welfare state, so that the meeting of basic needs is not the domain of philanthropy (no more GoFundMes for medical care). But then we also need to go beyond a basic living wage to instead have a "giving wage," meaning we should all earn enough to be able to give some of it away. The things we support through giving should be special projects that aren't funded by the state but nevertheless enrich life. 

Schiller joins today to discuss her ideas for a better kind of philanthropy. She explains why she thinks the effective altruists have everything backwards and why the "roses" in "bread and roses" should not be considered optional. 

Listeners might also enjoy our conversation from last year with Prof. Linsey McGoey, author of No Such Thing As A Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy.

"The project of philanthropy is to make the earth more of a home, and to encourage inhabitants of the spaces and institutions it provides to feel at home in the world. Ours is a world for humans. It should serve all of us, not the few who can exploit the many for maximum profit. The money we use to build the common world communicates our belief in that world, and in all who inhabit it. It affirms the value of humanity beyond price." - Amy Schiller, The Price of Humanity 

Brian Merchant is the technology columnist for the Los Angeles Times and author of the new book Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. Brian's book takes us back to early 19th century England, and the birth of the "Luddite" movement. The Luddites famously smashed new machines that were expected to take away jobs in the textile industry. Brian argues that the Luddites are often misunderstood and misrepresented, and that by examining their uprising, we can better prepare ourselves to deal with the socially disruptive effects of new technology in our own time.

The Luddites, Brian shows, weren't anti-technology. In fact, they embraced new machines that helped them do their jobs better. They were against machines that destroyed workers' livelihoods and rendered their skills useless. The Luddites rejected technology when it was used to enrich capitalists at the expense of laborers. Their dispute is best understood not as being over "technology" but about who gets the benefit of new technologies and who decides what kinds of technologies will be implemented. Today, Brian joins to clear up misconceptions about the Luddites and show us what we can learn from them.

“If the Luddites have taught us anything, it’s that robots aren’t taking our jobs. Our bosses are. Robots are not sentient—they do not have the capacity to be coming for or stealing or killing or threatening to take away our jobs. Management does. Consulting firms and corporate leadership do. Gig company and tech executives do...If the machinery or the robots are simply “coming,” if they just show up and relieve a helpless lot of humans of their livelihoods, then no one is to blame for this independently arising phenomenon, and little is to be done about it beyond bracing for impact. It’s not the executives, swayed by consulting firms who insist the future is in AI text generation or customer service bots; or the tech titans, who use algorithmic platforms to displace traditional workers; or the managers, who see an opportunity to improve profit margins by adopting automated kiosks that edge out cashiers; or the shipping conglomerate bosses, who decide to try to replace dockworkers with a fleet of automated trucks.” - Brian Merchant, Blood in the Machine

The Current Affairs article "The Luddites Were Right" pairs well with this episode.

This episode is free to the public and unlocked, because of the subject matter's importance. But Current Affairs is funded entirely by its readers, and can't continue to produce new work without your support, so if you enjoy our work, please consider purchasing a Patreon membership, magazine subscription, or donating to our organization.

Jon Ben-Menachem's Zeteo essay is here.

Rashid Khalidi's full interview is here.

W.D. Ehrhart's full interview is here.

More from Dr. Thrasher on what he saw at Columbia is here.

The Intercepted episode quoting Yasser Khan is here.

Full video of the quoted speech at the Columbia demonstration is here.

Further coverage of the protests can be found in the Current Affairs News Briefing.

Portions of this radio essay were adapted from the Current Affairs articles "My Date With Destiny" and "Palestine Protests are a Test of Whether This is a Free Country." Script and audio editing by Nathan J. Robinson, who is responsible for any errors.

Astra Taylor is a filmmaker, writer, and activist whose latest book is The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, based on her CBC Massey Lectures. Today she joins to discuss the themes of her lectures, which are build around the ideas of security and insecurity. What makes us actually "secure"? Security is a word that has right-wing connotations (surveillance cameras, security guards, etc.) But we know that there is another kind of security, the kind promised by programs like Social Security. Astra explains why she, as a longtime activist for debtors, thinks we live in an "age of insecurity" and distinguishes between the kinds of "existential" insecurities we are stuck with and the "manufactured" ones we might be able to get rid of. 

“My perspective is shaped by the years I’ve spent focused on the topic of inequality and its pernicious effects on culture and democracy both in my creative work as a filmmaker and writer and as an activist. Nearly a decade ago, I helped found the Debt Collective, the world’s first union for debtors, which has become a bastion for people who are broke and overwhelmed. Inequality is, indeed, out of control, with ten billionaire men possessing six times more wealth than the poorest three billion people on earth.6 But numbers do not capture the true nature or extent of the crisis. Insecurity, in contrast, describes how inequality is lived day after day. Where inequality can be represented by points on a graph, insecurity speaks to how those points feel, hovering in space over a tattered safety net or nothing at all. The writer Barbara Ehrenreich, in her 1989 study of the psychology of the middle class, dubbed the condition “fear of falling.” But today there’s barely any middle left, and everyone is afraid of what lies below.” - Astra Taylor, The Age of Insecurity 

An article Nathan wrote commenting on the book's themes is here. 

Myisha Cherry is a philosopher at UC-Riverside whose book The Case for Rage: Why Anger Is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle (Oxford University Press) argues that reason and emotion are not, as many people assume, opposites, but our emotions are often important expressions of our reason. We get angry when we our implicit framework for how the world ought to operate is violated, and Prof. Cherry argues that it's okay and even important to have this feeling. She shows that in the history of social movements, anger has been an important motivating factor, and argues that it can coexist with love, compassion, and thoughtfulness. 

Cherry does not advocate "mindless" rage. She says we need to be reflective, and figure out whether our anger is actually well-grounded in facts and sound morality. She distinguishes between different types of anger, some of which are healthier and more factually grounded than others. But she believes that if we embrace the right kinds of rage, they can help us "build a better world."

Anger plays the role of expressing the value of people of color and racial justice; it provides the eagerness, optimism, and self-belief needed to fight against persistent and powerful racist people and systems; and it allows the outraged to break certain racial rules as a form of intrinsic and extrinsic resistance. This helps explain how the oppressed can feel affirmed when others get angry on their behalf, how people are able to fight against powerful systems despite the risk of abuse and arrests, and why WNBA and NBA players—who used their platform to combat racism—were viewed as radical for simply expressing their feelings. —Myisha Cherry, The Case for Rage 

Malaika Jabali is Senior News and Politics Editor at Essence magazine. She is also the only previous Current Affairs contributor whose writing for our magazine has won an award! Her exceptional piece "The Color of Economic Anxiety" won the 2019 New York Association for Black Journalists award for magazine feature. She has now published her first book, It's Not You, It's Capitalism: Why It's Time to Break Up and How To Move On. In accessible and entertaining prose (with fun illustrations by artist Kayla E.), Jabali presents an introduction to leftist economic and social analysis for the uninitiated reader. 

Uniquely, the book looks at economics through analogies from modern dating life, and shows how some of the things that keep us trapped in toxic relationships have parallels in the way we feel trapped with our dysfunctional economic system. Her book is also valuable for the way it introduce socialism by highlighting leftists of color. Instead of beginning with Marx and Debs, Malaika gives us W.E.B. DuBois, Assata Shakur, and A. Philip Randolph. 

Today Malaika joins to discuss not only the basic anti-capitalist argument made in the book, but how she's thought about presenting that argument in a novel and easy-to-read way. (Her book, incidentally, makes a fantastic holiday gift especially for young people.) We also talk about her award-winning Current Affairs essay about neglected Black voters in Milwaukee, who saw no point in supporting the Democratic Party in 2016, and whose "economic anxiety" Hillary Clinton saw little need to address.

"I broke up with capitalism around my junior year of college. Ever since, I've felt like the patient friend waiting for my bestie to see why she needs to break up with her toxic partner, too. While socialism has captured mainstream attention in the U.S. in the past decade or so, probably because of the popularity of Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America, I didn't arrive at my anti-capitalism through electoral politics. It was through studying Black history as an undergrad that I started to see how messed up our whole system really was. Reading about how slaveholders were willing to kidnap, brand, torture, and work their labor force to near-death—oh and create a system of white supremacy to maintain their profits that still thrives today—will do that to you. I also soaked in the words of Black revolutionaries who spoke out against capitalism, including my godfather Charles Barron, a former member of the Black Panther Party. "We keep fighting the symptoms," he is prone to say, "But capitalism is the disease." - Malaika Jabali, It's Not You, It's Capitalism

Today we take a dive into the world of "corporate bullshit" with Nick Hanauer, who has become an expert on spotting and debunking it. Nick is a businessman who became known for warning of the devastating social effects of plutocracy, and who now hosts the "Pitchfork Economics" podcast which presents sharp conversations with leading progressive economic experts. 

Nick's latest project is the book Corporate Bullsh*t, written with Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen. (Listen to Donald's appearance on the CA podcast here.) The book dives into American history to show how every time a progressive reform was proposed, the corporate PR machine spun the proposal as a job-killer, a socialist plot, the end of civilization, etc. Some of the examples collected in the book are truly galling, as Nathan explains in his review of the book here. On this episode, we look at some of the common tendencies used in corporate propaganda and why they can be persuasive to people. We also discuss how Nick came to be a public opponent of plutocracy, and we have a short digression on the fraudulence of the "MyPillow," since Nick comes from a family of immigrants who spent a century making pillows and bedding.

Over the past century and a half, on a broad range of issues including the minimum wage, workplace safety, environmental regulations, consumer protection—even on morally indisputable issues like child labor and racial segregation—the people and corporations who profited from the status quo have effectively wielded a familiar litany of groundless ‘economic’ claims and fear mongering rhetoric in their efforts to slow or quash necessary reforms. As even a cursory examination of the quotes we’ve included in this book will show, the wealthy and powerful are willing to say anything—even the worst things imaginable—to retain their wealth and power. But while there is simply no bottom to this well of shamelessness, there is a pattern. 

Dr. Luke Messac is an emergency physician and historian whose new book is Your Money or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine (Oxford University Press). Messac also wrote the article "Why Medical Debt Forgiveness Drives Are Not Enough" for Current Affairs. Messac's book looks at the entire history of medical debt, how hospitals went from being (somewhat) charitable institutions to farming debt collection out to huge companies that make massive profits off shaking down poor people. He joins today to explain the harms that medical debt does to patients' lives (and to their relationships with their doctors), how the debt collection industry works, and why things don't have to be this way. 

"We must reckon with the bounty hunters of medicine: the debt collectors who haunt the lives of the millions of Americans who cannot pay for their medical care. Any solution that leaves intact an industry that profits off the financial captivity of the poor cannot credibly be called just. It is time to build a future without medical debt or its collectors." — Luke Messac 

“There is a choice about what the future holds, and it’s not necessarily Mark Zuckerberg’s or Elon Musk’s to make. The fight that remains will be to once again assert the possibility of constructing our lives as free and autonomous persons in a natural world not destroyed by industrial pollution and not ruled by the algorithms of the tech monopolies. It will be to resist this future of pseudo-experience and fantasy exploration. That resistance will require both government regulation and the individual decisions of millions of citizens around the world about how they are going to use technology. Fortunately these four technologies of the Metaverse, crypto, transhumanism, and space travel are in their early stages of adoption...[My greatest fear is] that enchanted by the magic of the Technocrats’ “immutable money, infinite frontier, eternal life,” we will sleep through a right-wing revolution and wake up to find our democracy gone and our children being turned into Meta cyborgs. Let us wake up and resist the end of reality.” — Jonathan Taplin, The End of Reality

Read the Current Affairs critique of Andreessen's "techno-optimist manifesto" here. Our episode on the relationship between MySpace and music is here. The crypto story is fleshed out in our previous episode with Zeke Faux.